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The Supreme Court is acting as a right-wing cudgel knocking down rights to abortion and gay marriage. Or, maybe, the court has missed its chance to make real conservative inroads on issues like presidential powers. Surely one side of this debate must have the accurate pulse of the judicial branch, right? Here, Isgur, attorney, former DOJ spokesperson, and co-host of the popular Supreme Court podcast Advisory Opinions, makes the bold and convincing argument that the Court and its justices can’t be categorized using the same hyper-partisan talking points that permeate our other government branches. Isgur provides profiles of the justices themselves, details how the court’s history has shaped the current iteration, and even explains how a case ends up on the docket. Isgur delineates the complexities of the law and processes of our highest court with humor and reverence. Readers looking for clarity on this fundamental institution would be wise to “grant cert” (court parlance for agreeing to hear a case) to an engaged reading of Last Branch Standing.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A measured defense of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, writes lawyer and conservative activist Isgur, was unusual among the tangles of the federal government in being generally popular, with an approval rating of 70% as recently as 2020. Now, however, “for the first time, more people disapprove of the Court than approve of it.” This owes much to decisions that would seem to be politically driven, such as granting President Trump blanket immunity for acts committed in office that just might turn out to be illegal. It’s not as sweeping as all that, Isgur counsels: There’s still a distinction between official and private acts in play, and while it doesn’t help that the decision’s language is so vague that “the real answer is…that nobody knows,” the decision, she suggests, was less partisan than a protection against political persecution of the opposition—which is just what’s happening, albeit emanating from and not toward the White House. The central problem is both simple and deeply complex, and it turns on the fact that the legislative branch isn’t anywhere close to doing its job, allowing the executive to run rampant while putting the judiciary in the untenable position of making law rather than interpreting it. There are any number of remedies to the court’s ills, Isgur writes, including imposing “an enforceable ethics code.” Even more revolutionary might be a constitutional guarantee allowing each president to appoint two justices, so that the number on the bench might be as high as 13, assuming term limits are indeed set. But in the end, Isgur—who has good and evenhanded things to say about every currently sitting justice—demands that Congress, now constituting “one big dog and 434 yapping backbenchers with no hope of legislating their way into reelection or relevancy,” actually start doing what it’s in business to do. An opinionated but persuasive call to think a little more kindly of the highest court in the land. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.