Today's New York Times reports on a new study by three economists purporting to show that the Supreme Court's decisions are increasingly tilted toward the interests of the rich, and suggesting that this may play a role in rising economic inequality. Here's how the NYT story begins:
Supreme Court justices take two oaths. The first, required of all federal officials, is a promise to support the Constitution. The second, a judicial oath, is more specific. It requires them, among other things, to "do equal right to the poor and to the rich."
A new study being released on Monday from economists at Yale and Columbia contends that the Supreme Court has in recent decades fallen short of that vow.
The study, called "Ruling for the Rich," concludes that the wealthy have the wind at their backs before the justices and that a good way to guess the outcome of a case is to follow the money.
The study, "Ruling for the Rich: The Supreme Court Over Time," by Andrea Prat, Fiona Scott Morton, and Jacob Spitz, was posted as an NBER working paper, and has not yet been peer-reviewed or (to my knowledge) accepted anywhere for publication. But that did not stop it from getting a the full-article treatment in the NYT.
