If You Can Imagine It, The Supreme Court Used To Be Even More Political

Historian Rachel Shelden, author of The Political Supreme Court: A Forgotten History, joins me to unpack how deeply political the Supreme Court actually was for its first century, why the Court’s modern claim to be apolitical is a relatively recent invention, and why understanding that history matters for today’s debates over court reform and legitimacy.

Key Takeaways
* The Supreme Court was designed to be a political institution: 19th-century justices rode circuit, participated in state and local politics, ran for office, and even wrote legislation and presidential addresses.

* Lifetime tenure didn’t always mean staying on the Court. Many justices left for other roles they saw as equal or better, including David Davis, who left the Court to become a U.S. Senator from Illinois in 1877.

* The Court’s image as an apolitical, isolated institution developed largely at the end of the 19th century and through the 20th, driven in part by the professionalization of lawyers and a reframing of the Constitution as a legal rather than political document.

* Marbury v. Madison‘s reputation as the moment the Court became apolitical is, according to Shelden, more myth than history, a narrative that took hold around the Court’s 1890 centennial.

* Originalism claims historical grounding, but Shelden argues it often isn’t doing rigorous history. It selectively cites the past rather than engaging with the full, contested range of 19th-century constitutional debate.