Last Branch Standing

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A myth-busting glimpse into the inner workings of the Supreme Court, revealing what we get wrong about the Roberts Court, what the justices’ clerks gossip about, and how to fix a court in crisis—from the popular ABC news pundit and top legal podcaster

“Isgur has all your answers in these smart, snappy, clear-eyed pages.”
—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

Most people get the Supreme Court all wrong. A smattering of high-profile decisions have popularized a simplistic idea of the Court and its justices. Yes, six of them were appointed by Republicans, and only three by Democrats. So, how does that 6-3 conservative majority explain why in the 2024-25 term, conservative Brett Kavanaugh was more likely to agree with liberal Elena Kagan than conservative Neil Gorsuch? Or why the court threw shade at Florida’s attempt to ban drag shows?

To truly understand the Court, argues Sarah Isgur, you have to look beyond partisan politics—the “X-Axis.” The wisest court watchers apply another measuring stick, the “Y-Axis,” where the nine justices span from order-loving institutionalists to true chaos agents. Once you appreciate these overlapping and even competing impulses, the Court begins to look a lot more like a 3-3-3 split than 6-3.

The ultimate insider, Isgur takes readers on a deep dive inside the Supreme Court: how cases land at the Court’s doorstep, which justices attend clerk happy hours (and which ones even bother showing up to the office), why conservatives already have buyer’s remorse about Amy Coney Barrett, and how the whole judicial system is kind of a constitutional anomaly. She’ll even help you decide whether you should throw your hat in the ring and go to law school! Blending irreverent humor and incisive commentary, Isgur goes underneath the robes—and shows us what we need to do to preserve the rule of law amid dicey times in this little self-governing experiment we’ve been running for the last 250 years.