There's Nothing Supreme About the Roberts Court

Today’s radical decisions have been delivered exclusively by justices handpicked through a pipeline designed to ensure ideological loyalty to corporate and religious elites

On Tuesday night, following his first joint address to Congress since being re-elected, the nation witnessed Donald Trump publicly thanking Chief Justice John Roberts. Most who opined on it afterward suggested that the extra note of gratitude was due to the immunity ruling. But it was for much more than that.

With a smirk, Trump clapped him on the shoulder and declared: “Thank you again. Thank you again. I won’t forget.” He was not just thanking Roberts for shielding him from prosecution—he was acknowledging the man who had quietly created the conditions that made his re-election and Elon Musk’s co-presidency possible. The Roberts Court has systematically rewritten the rules of American politics so that while casting a ballot in 2024 may not have seemed different from casting one in 2008 or before, most of the long-standing guardrails against excessive corporate power and theocratic influence have been dismantled.

The Hijacked Court and Its Beneficiaries

Calling the Roberts Court “conservative” is a category error; it is an instrument of a decades-long judicial coup orchestrated by the revanchist coalition of billionaire money and religious right mobilization operationalized by Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society. Unlike past landmark Supreme Court rulings—such as Brown v. Board of Education—which involved justices from multiple ideological and partisan backgrounds, today’s radical decisions have been delivered exclusively by justices handpicked through a pipeline designed to ensure ideological loyalty to corporate and religious elites.

Unlike the Warren or even the Burger or Rehnquist Courts, where major rulings typically had broad agreement among justices appointed by both parties, the Roberts Court’s 5-4 and 6-3 rulings represent a fundamentally different reality. This is not an independent court making decisions based on legal principles, taking cases as they arrive. Instead, it is a political weapon built to serve the Federalist Society’s dual mission: to advance corporate power while embedding theocratic rule where it does not threaten business interests.

If this happened anywhere else in the world, we would call it a constitutional coup. If another country’s Supreme Court shielded an authoritarian leader from prosecution for an attempted coup, dismantled voting rights, rewrote campaign finance laws to allow unlimited spending by billionaires, etc., we wouldn’t call it conservative jurisprudence. We would call it what it is: a constitutional coup. Yet, because this is happening in the United States under the veneer of judicial review, the media frames it as ideological differences rather than an outright pre-programmed assault on democracy.

The 2020 vs. 2024 Shift: Corporate America’s Turn to Trump

Today, too many continue to look to the Supreme Court’s comprehensive rejection of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as evidence that Roberts is true to his word—just “calling balls and strikes”—and as a reason to preserve hope that “the courts will save us.” But in reality, those 2020 decisions reflected what corporate interests wanted at the time. The business community—especially multinational corporations—viewed Trump as erratic, economically destabilizing, and harmful to their global standing. Business’s priority was stability, and Biden’s expected victory offered a controlled return to normalcy.

Yet the very same corporate interests that distanced themselves from Trump in 2020 swung back in 2024. With Biden pursuing stronger antitrust measures, worker protections, and corporate taxation, the business class decided it was better off with Trump, none more dramatically than tech interests. The Roberts Court followed suit.

Roberts as the Corporate Guardian

Unlike Alito and Thomas, who are all-in on some of the most extreme ideological positions of the MAGA movement, Roberts has consistently acted to protect corporate interests from ideological and religious ambitions when they threaten bottom lines. For example:

• NFIB v. Sebelius (2012): Despite overwhelming conservative pressure to strike down the Affordable Care Act, Roberts saved it. Not out of principle, but because by 2012, the healthcare industry had come to rely on the ACA’s subsidies and insurance mandates. The ruling was a concession to corporate interests, ensuring that the health insurance industry retained a profitable, government-backed framework rather than facing a chaotic collapse.

• Moore v. Harper (2023): The Court’s ruling against the independent state legislature theory was framed as a win for democracy, but in reality, it preserved the Roberts Court’s own authority over election disputes. By rejecting the most extreme version of state legislature supremacy, Roberts ensured that the Court—rather than rogue legislatures—would remain the final arbiter of contested elections, reinforcing the power of the billionaire-backed judiciary over the Republican Party’s election-denying base.

Unfortunately, the media all too regularly attributes Roberts joining with the “liberal” justices to either his concern for the “rule of law” or the credibility of the Court, when, in fact, those cases merely reflect the instances when corporate interests align with the rule of law.

Why We Must Call It the Roberts Court

Language shapes reality. When we call it the “Supreme Court,” we lend legitimacy to an institution that often doesn’t function as one. This is the Roberts Court, whose decisions are not the work of independent jurists; they are the actions of operatives placed there by the Federalist Society to carry out a specific agenda.

Naming the Roberts Court for what it is strips away the illusion of impartiality. It forces the public to see this Court for what it has become—a political body, not a judicial one.

Trump’s gratitude on Tuesday was not just for one ruling—it was for the entire judicial coup that has rewritten American democracy. The Roberts Court has transformed elections into playgrounds for billionaires, ensured that insurrectionists can return to power, and created a legal framework where corporate and theocratic rule is protected from democratic accountability.

There is nothing supreme about this Court. It is an instrument of minority rule and a legal arm of the billionaire class. If we fail to confront this reality, we may never get our democracy back.

For an extended analysis, see my Substack “Weekend Reading” edition, The Courts Won’t Save Us.