I was thrilled to welcome back Lisa Graves this week ahead of the new Roberts Court term that starts October 5th. Her book Without Precedent is the first place to go to understand John Roberts and the damage he’s done. Lisa has been sounding the alarm about that damage since her time as the chief counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee — which should raise questions for the legal commentators who are only noticing now.
We had our share of technical issues (my camera didn’t work at first, and Lisa’s phone nearly died), but the conversation more than made up for it. A few highlights:
The Roberts realignment. The Roberts Court is significantly responsible for the fact that both parties are becoming purely sectional — closer to the politics before the Civil War than to anything in living memory. In 2008, Republicans got about 36% of their House votes from blue states, and those states made up 29% of their caucus. By 2024 they still got 34% of their votes there, but blue-state members were just 16% of the caucus.
Why it took Roberts 40 years to kill the Voting Rights Act. After Bolden, a Court with the votes to gut the Voting Rights Act was overruled by a Congress that included Northern Republicans. Congress passed a stronger Section 2, and the Court gave in with Gingles. What changed wasn’t Roberts’s convictions. It was the composition of the Republican Party, which now draws almost entirely from Neo-Confederate states when it once drew from all parts of the country. Trump gets away with everything not because he’s persuasive but because his party has no internal dissent.
Don’t buy the “neutral court” story. As the new term opens, expect coverage that continues to treat the Roberts Court as a body wrestling in good faith with hard cases. That’s always been a myth — one that Lisa argues should have died with the immunity ruling, which effectively pardoned Trump after the fact and cleared his path back to power.
The real Purcell principle. The Roberts Court won’t change election rules close to an election — unless it wants to.
The tariff ruling doesn’t show independence. When Roberts breaks with Trump, it tends to be because the business community broke first.
Control of the Senate matters more than the House. A House majority won’t stop two more years of MAGA judges, and six-year Senate terms will outlast any 2028 swing.
There are two filibusters. Lisa and I agree the one that blocks a bill from even being debated should go. Let the country have the argument, and make the other side own a vote against final passage.
