From New York Times bestselling author Adam Cohen, a revelatory
examination of the conservative direction of the Supreme Court over
the last fifty years since the Nixon administration
In 1969, newly elected president Richard Nixon launched an assault on
the Supreme Court. He appointed four conservative justices in just
three years, dismantling its previous liberal majority and setting it
on a rightward course that continues to today. Before this drastic
upheaval, the Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, had been a
powerful force for equality and inclusion, expanding the rights of
the poor and racial minorities. Its rulings integrated schools across
the South, established the Miranda warning for suspects in police
custody, and recognized the principle of one person, one vote. But
when Warren retired, Nixon used his four nominations to put a stop to
that liberal agenda, and turn the Court into a force for his own
views about what kind of nation America should be.
In Supreme
Inequality, bestselling author Adam Cohen surveys the most
significant Supreme Court rulings since the Nixon era and exposes how
rarely the Court has veered away from its agenda of promoting
inequality. Contrary to what Americans like to believe, the Court
does little to protect the rights of the poor and disadvantaged; in
fact, it has not been on their side for fifty years. Many of the
greatest successes of the Warren Court, in areas such as school
desegregation, voting rights, and protecting workers, have been
abandoned in favor of rulings that protect corporations and
privileged Americans, who tend to be white, wealthy, and powerful.
As the nation comes
to grips with two new Trump-appointed justices, Cohen proves beyond
doubt that the modern Court has been one of the leading forces behind
the nation’s soaring level of economic inequality, and that an
institution revered as a source of fairness has been systematically
making America less fair. A triumph of American legal, political, and
social history, Supreme Inequality holds to account the
highest court in the land, and shows how much damage it has done to
America’s ideals of equality, democracy, and justice for all.