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Your civics textbook says the Supreme Court is a neutral umpire, nine robed experts reading the plain text of the Constitution, above politics. Does that hold up? The Least Dangerous Branch is a 12-part ReThink History series that puts the ideal on trial. It traces the Court from the Framers' bargain in Article III, where judicial review isn't even written down, through the decisions that betrayed the promise: Dred Scott, which chose slavery and helped light the fuse of civil war; Plessy, which blessed Jim Crow; the Lochner era, which struck down child-labor laws in the name of liberty; and Korematsu, which saluted while 120,000 Americans were interned. It follows the fight over who sits on the Court, from FDR's court-packing gambit to the modern confirmation wars, and asks the question the textbook avoids: has one party shaped this Court disproportionately, or did things even out? Then it tests the modern legitimacy crisis, Bush v. Gore, Citizens United, Shelby County, and Dobbs, stee
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