Sarah Isgur joins for a conversation on her new book, Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today's Supreme Court. Drawing on history, law, and current debates, Sarah Isgur offers an engaging look at the Supreme Court, exploring its unique role in American democracy, how the Court became the nation’s “last branch standing,” and what its growing power means for the future of the Constitution. Julie Silverbrook, chief content and learning officer at the National Constitution Center, moderates.
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Sarah Isgur is the editor of SCOTUSblog, host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions, and an ABC News contributor. Isgur has previously worked on multiple presidential campaigns and in all three branches of the federal government.
Julie Silverbrook is chief content and learning officer at the National Constitution Center where she leads the strategy, development, and delivery of the Center’s content, public programs, and educational initiatives, advancing its mission of nonpartisan constitutional education and civil dialogue.
Additional Resources
- Sarah Isgur, Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today's Supreme Court
Excerpt from interview: Sarah Isgur on the Court and politics
Sarah Isgur: Two big things, one, it’s not that I am denying that the Justices have judicial philosophies or ideological priors that they bring to cases. Of course they do. That would be very silly of me. It’s that if they were only doing politics by the party that appointed them, you would be getting close to 90% of the cases incorrect. So last term, 15% of the cases fell along ideological lines where five or six of the conservatives are on one side and all of the liberal Justices are in dissent. The exact same number of cases, 15%, had all of the liberal Justices in the majority and only conservatives in dissent in those six, three, five, four cases. Of course, the most common outcome of any Supreme Court case is unanimous. And the pushback I get on that from people is like yeah, but in the big cases. And I got in this fight the other day, so this is more of a discussion topic for the room, perhaps. I think, unfortunately, we’re not agreeing on what the big cases are at the beginning of the term and then seeing how they turn out, we’re waiting to see that they turn out along ideological lines and then declaring those to be the big cases.
Excerpt from interview: Sarah Isgur on the Court as the last branch standing
Sarah Isgur: So my argument is that it’s the last branch that the founders would recognize at this point. Congress has withered away into nothingness. I have a lot of theories as to why that’s happened, sort of the macro-historical theories going back to the Progressive Era, the micro theories over campaign finance and leadership problems where Newt Gingrich basically makes it pointless to be anyone other than the Speaker of the House. I compare the other 434 members to puppies chewing on the furniture because nobody has given them enough to do.
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