A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research offers evidence that the U.S. Supreme Court is increasingly siding with wealthy interests, especially in cases involving money, regulation, and corporate power.
The research, conducted by scholars from Columbia and Yale, looked at more than 1,700 cases between 1953 and 2022.
These were cases that directly affected how wealth moves through society.
The authors defined a vote as “pro-rich” if it helped the party more likely to be wealthy, usually corporations or creditors, and “pro-poor” if it helped workers, consumers, or the government regulate in the public interest.
Back in the 1950s, justices appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents voted similarly in these kinds of cases. But that has changed dramatically.
By 2022, the average Republican-appointed justice was 47 percentage points more likely to vote in favor of the wealthy than their Democratic counterparts.
“We find no credible difference between the economic ideology of the two parties at the start of our sample,” the researchers wrote.
“However, the Republican appointees have become more pro-rich at roughly twice the rate that Democratic appointees have become more pro-poor.”
Not Just About One Type of Case
The gap wasn’t just limited to one area of law. Across issue areas like labor rights, environmental regulation, federal taxation, and corporate competition, the study found a consistent pattern: the Court has become more polarized, and more decisions have favored wealthier interests.
To conduct the analysis, Yale student researchers read and classified each case, determining whether it moved wealth toward the rich or the poor.
If it didn’t, the case was excluded from the sample. The final dataset included votes from 36 justices and nearly 16,000 individual decisions.
The researchers used a model to estimate each justice’s ideological leaning on this pro-rich/pro-poor scale.
The results placed justices like Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett as the most pro-rich, while Earl Warren, William Brennan, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg ranked among the most pro-poor.
Jackson Raises Red Flags
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the Court’s newest members, recently echoed concerns that align with the study’s findings.
As reported by NBC News, Jackson issued a sharp dissent in a 2025 case involving vehicle emissions regulations, warning that the Court’s actions could “have a reputational cost” and feed perceptions that it favors big business.
“This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this Court than ordinary citizens,” Jackson wrote, as quoted by NBC News.
She criticized the Court for allowing fuel producers to challenge EPA-approved California emissions rules based on a legal theory “that the Court has refused to apply in cases brought by less powerful plaintiffs.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, rejected that framing. He argued that the government “may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders.”
Moving Beyond Legal Theory
But Jackson wasn’t alone in raising alarms. The NBER study suggests that focusing on legal theories like originalism or textualism might not really explain how justices vote when it comes to money and power.
Instead, looking at how decisions actually affect who gets richer or poorer gives a clearer sense of what’s going on.
To drive the point home, the researchers ran some what-if scenarios.
They looked at how decisions might have turned out if Hillary Clinton had been the one appointing justices instead of Donald Trump.
The result? Many rulings would have likely landed on the side of workers, consumers, or the general public, not big business.
A Growing Divide
In a system where justices serve for life and are appointed by presidents who may not win the popular vote, the study suggests the Court has become a more reliable ally to the wealthy.
As Jackson put it in her dissent: the Court seems to show a “simultaneous aversion to hearing cases involving the potential vindication of less powerful litigants, workers, criminal defendants, and the condemned, among others.”
With legal scholars and critics debating whether this tilt is due to ideology, party politics, or institutional design, the study’s findings are likely to add fuel to a growing debate over the Court’s legitimacy and its role in shaping economic policy from the bench.