Jun 21, 2026 · 55 min · 12 segments
The Supreme Court has never occupied a more central place in American governance. Republican dominance on that court has enabled them to push through much of their agenda without going through…
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Samantha Hancox-LiHostSo I'm going to play devil's advocate a little bit here, where I kind of started with this question of how did the court get so powerful? How did we get to a position where the court is going to be in the business of deciding how abortion is legal in various states? And it seems like maybe it's not a great situation to be in.
I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that we as liberals are kind of complicit in getting here, that for a long time we've basically accepted the framework that it is the Supreme Court that is the supreme branch of government, right? That is going to decide our most fundamental constitutional questions.
And we kind of embraced this because we did historically, we got some big wins there, right? We've talked about Brown versus Board of Education.
And like, I think, you know, encouraged a lot of liberals to think like, yeah, that was that was correct.
That was the right way to do it was to decide marriage equality in argument at the court.
And, you know, there's a lot there's a lot of lawyers in the Democratic coalition.
There's a lot of groups that kind of like know how to move the ball down the field or at least try to by arguing things in court.
I worry that this has all been kind of a mistake, that we shouldn't be trying to settle our most fundamental questions at the Supreme Court.
So I'm going to play devil's advocate a little bit here, where I kind of started with this question of how did the court get so powerful? How did we get to a position where the court is going to be in the business of deciding how abortion is legal in various states? And it seems like maybe it's not a great situation to be in.
I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that we as liberals are kind of complicit in getting here, that for a long time we've basically accepted the framework that it is the Supreme Court that is the supreme branch of government, right? That is going to decide our most fundamental constitutional questions.
And we kind of embraced this because we did historically, we got some big wins there, right? We've talked about Brown versus Board of Education.
And like, I think, you know, encouraged a lot of liberals to think like, yeah, that was that was correct.
That was the right way to do it was to decide marriage equality in argument at the court.
And, you know, there's a lot there's a lot of lawyers in the Democratic coalition.
There's a lot of groups that kind of like know how to move the ball down the field or at least try to by arguing things in court.
I worry that this has all been kind of a mistake, that we shouldn't be trying to settle our most fundamental questions at the Supreme Court.
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