The Supreme Court: How Did We Get Here? And What Comes Next?

Abstract

The politics of appointments have transformed the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years. We examine why and how the current conservative supermajority on the court came to be, with a particular focus on how this court stands apart from earlier ones. We trace the factors that allowed President Donald Trump to reshape the court with his three appointments in his first term and evaluate the importance of the conservative supermajority by connecting it to theories of the court’s collective decision-making. We show that the current court is the culmination of a “partisan sort” in appointments—a strict correlation between party and ideology—that began a few decades ago but did not fully crystallize until the 2010s. Finally, we summarize simulations that show why conservatives are likely to control the court for several decades.