New academic research provides stark data supporting a growing public concern: the U.S. Supreme Court appears increasingly inclined to rule in favor of wealthy individuals and corporations over ordinary citizens. The findings lend empirical weight to a pointed observation made last year by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Justice Jackson's Warning and the Data That Backs It
In a powerful dissent in June 2023, Justice Jackson argued that the court's actions were reinforcing an "unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this court than ordinary citizens." She suggested the court was both overly receptive to cases involving powerful financial interests and simultaneously hesitant to hear appeals from workers, criminal defendants, and others with less power.
Economists from Columbia and Yale universities have now released a working paper through the National Bureau of Economic Research titled "Ruling For the Rich." Their analysis, covering all Supreme Court cases on economic issues from 1953 to the present, confirms a dramatic shift. The researchers developed a transparent protocol to categorize decisions as either "pro-rich" or "pro-poor."
A Seven-Decade Trend Toward Polarization
The study's core finding is a sharp and steady rise in partisan polarization on the bench. In the 1950s, justices appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents showed similar tendencies to cast votes favoring the wealthy. Over the following decades, that changed radically.
"We estimate a steady increase in polarization, culminating in an implied party gap of 47 percentage points by 2022," the research team stated. This means Republican-appointed justices have become vastly more likely than their Democratic-appointed colleagues to rule for the party with greater financial resources in a given case.
The paper cites examples like the 2007 case Massachusetts v. EPA, which ruled that the Clean Air Act applied to greenhouse gas emissions. This decision, seen as benefiting public and environmental health over certain industrial interests, was categorized as "pro-poor."
Ideology vs. Economic Interest in Judicial Reasoning
The authors argue that this economic metric—tracking who benefits from a ruling—is a more powerful predictor of decisions than the judicial philosophies often cited by conservative justices, such as originalism or textualism. Justices like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito frequently use these frameworks, rooted in the historical context of a law's writing, to justify their opinions.
However, the researchers note these ideologies are not applied consistently. "Making the rich richer may not be an ideology that is easily justifiable to ordinary citizens, but does a better job at explaining decisions than theories of statutory or constitutional interpretation," they concluded. The massive 47-point gap suggests economic alignment often outweighs stated interpretive methods.
For observers in Canada and internationally, the study raises profound questions about access to justice and the perception of fairness in one of the world's most influential courts. It validates concerns that the judiciary's composition and decisions have tangible, measurable consequences for economic equality and the power dynamics between citizens and corporations.
