This episode features a May 17, 2016 interview with Ian Millhiser, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Editor of ThinkProgress Justice, and author of Injustices: The Supreme Court’s History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted.

In the past year, we’ve seen a lot of drama on the Supreme Court. In 2015, the Court decided in Obergefell v Hodges that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. In 2016, the hugely influential conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died; and, in his wake, Senate Republicans have refused to hold hearings to consider President Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia, the federal judge Merrick Garland. These major events have brought attention to the Court and its legacy. Ian Millhiser’s book Injustices takes up that legacy, but certainly doesn’t glorify it. Millhiser’s main contention: “Time and time again, the justices have taken the trust our Constitution places in them and wielded it to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. They’ve read doubtful ideologies into the Constitution’s vaguest phrases. And they’ve ignored provisions intended to protect the unpopular and the least fortunate.”