Economists Say the Supreme Court’s Rulings Are Tilting Toward the Wealthy

Study Claims Supreme Court Is Drifting Toward the Wealthy

Supreme Court justices swear two oaths. One is the standard promise all federal officials make to uphold the Constitution. The other, a specific judicial oath, obligates them to “do equal right to the poor and to the rich.”

According to a new economics paper from Yale and Columbia, the modern Supreme Court is falling short of that ideal.

The study, titled “Ruling for the Rich,” argues that in recent decades the Court’s decisions have increasingly favored wealthier parties — and that, in many cases, you can predict the outcome simply by following the money.

The authors say that in 2022, Republican-appointed justices sided with the richer party in 70 percent of economic-related cases they analyzed, up from about 45 percent in 1953. Democratic appointees, by contrast, have moved in the opposite direction, backing the poorer side more often.

A Growing Perception of a Pro-Money Court

The findings echo a concern Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson raised in a June dissent, in which she warned about “the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this court than ordinary citizens.”

The study suggests the Court has become sharply polarized in cases involving economic stakes, with Republican and Democratic appointees now far apart — a stark change from the mid-20th century, when their voting patterns on rich-versus-poor questions were statistically similar.

Criticism of the Court as tilted toward the powerful is not new. Public trust in the institution has sagged in recent years, and some commentators have explicitly tied that erosion to decisions perceived as favoring corporations and the affluent.

In his 2021 book “Supreme Inequality,” writer and former New York Times editorial board member Adam Cohen argued that the Court’s rulings have “lifted up those who are already high and brought down those who are already low.”

Speaking about the new research, Cohen said the economists are putting data behind trends he and others have been “watching for a long time,” pointing to cases that amplified the role of money in politics, weakened public-sector unions and narrowed the reach of federal regulators.

“It’s important to see respected academics actually crunching the numbers,” he said, “and showing that this is exactly what has been happening.”

From Business Wins to Wealth Wins

Legal scholars have previously examined related questions by tracking how often businesses prevail at the Court.

In one influential study, Lee Epstein of Washington University in St. Louis and Mitu Gulati of the University of Virginia looked at a century of cases where a business appeared on only one side (with the opposing party being an employee, union, shareholder, advocacy group or government agency).

They found that across 100 years, businesses won about 41 percent of the time. Under the current Court, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. since 2005, that success rate rose to 63 percent. By contrast, under the liberal Warren Court (1953–1969), businesses prevailed in just 29 percent of such cases.

The new paper from economists Fiona Scott Morton (Yale), Andrea Prat and Jacob Spitz (both Columbia) goes a step further. Rather than focusing only on businesses, it attempts to classify which side in a given case is more likely to be wealthy — and then assesses whether the Court shifted resources toward that side.

How the Economists Measured “Rich vs. Poor”

To build their dataset, the authors say they created a protocol to label which party in a case was more likely to be rich or poor based on economic role.

They then deemed a justice’s vote “pro-rich” when it produced an outcome that would move money or resources toward the side more likely to be wealthy.

For example, they classified the 2007 case Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency — which required the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases if they endangered public health — as favoring the poor. The reasoning: tighter pollution rules impose costs on shareholders, who tend to be wealthier than average citizens, while potential health and environmental benefits accrue broadly.

The authors acknowledge that these classifications require judgment calls. To reduce arbitrariness, they say they used consistent rules: decisions were coded as favoring the rich if they backed employers over workers, companies over consumers, businesses over regulators, or outcomes that reduced competition or weakened the social safety net.

Teams of Yale undergraduates applied this rubric to Supreme Court decisions involving economic issues from 1953 onward. Unanimous rulings and cases too hard to categorize were excluded, and the researchers say they performed quality checks to keep coding consistent.

“We focused on cases where a reasonable person can figure out which direction the money is moving,” Professor Scott Morton said in an interview.

A Partisan Split That Widens Over Time

According to the study, justices appointed by presidents of both parties looked similar on rich-versus-poor decisions in the early 1950s. In 1953, the economists say, Republican and Democratic appointees each sided with the wealthier party about 45 percent of the time in their sample.

By 2022, that picture had changed dramatically: the average Republican-appointed justice voted for the richer side about 70 percent of the time, while the average Democratic appointee did so around 35 percent of the time.

“Put differently,” the authors write, “Republican appointees have grown more pro-rich at about twice the pace that Democratic appointees have become more pro-poor.”

Legal Scholars Push Back — and Lean In

Reaction from legal academics has been mixed.

Professor Gulati, who co-authored the earlier business-focused study, said he was skeptical at first. “I initially got the heebie-jeebies about their coding,” he admitted. “Having undergraduates read cases and decide rich versus poor is a tough assignment, even for experienced lawyers or judges.”

But he also suggested that the field may need to be open to new approaches. “It might be time to embrace methods that offer fresh angles on what the Court is doing,” he said.

Other scholars were more critical. Jonathan Adler, a law professor at William & Mary, faulted some of the assumptions built into the economists’ framework, particularly the idea that all regulation — including environmental rules — should automatically be classified as pro-poor.

“In the end,” Adler said, “the study seems to show little more than the fact that Republican appointees are more conservative now than they used to be.”

The Oath vs. Outcomes

The debate over the Court’s economic leanings is unlikely to end with this study. But it arrives at a moment when the justices’ own words about fairness are under renewed scrutiny.

At his 2005 confirmation hearing, then–Judge John Roberts was asked whether he would “be on the side of the little guy.”

He answered by pointing back to the oath he would take.

“If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy’s going to win in court before me,” he said. “But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, then the big guy’s going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution. That’s the oath.”

The new research suggests that in economic cases, the “big guy” may be winning more often — especially when the Court’s conservative bloc holds the majority. Whether that reflects neutral constitutional interpretation, changing politics or a deeper tilt toward the wealthy is likely to remain the subject of fierce argument, both inside academia and far beyond it.