Photograph Source: Fred Schilling – Public Domain

October 6 is the first Monday of the month. It is the traditional start of the U.S. Supreme Court term. It is also the twentieth year with John Roberts as Chief Justice. While American democracy faces many challenges—economic inequality, racial divisions, and rampant polarization—another corrosive force too often overlooked sits at the very top of the judicial hierarchy. The Roberts Court may be the most aggressively anti-democratic Supreme Court in U.S. history.

By design the Court is inherently insulated from democracy. Justices are unelected, serve for life, and wield the power to strike down laws passed by elected representatives. The Constitution envisions this insulation as a safeguard: the Court should resist majoritarian pressures and protect vulnerable minorities. In United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 US. 144 (1938), the famous footnote four laid out this vision of the judiciary as the guardian of political participation, tasked with keeping the channels of democratic change open. But under Roberts, the Court has abandoned this role. Instead of defending democracy, the Court has shut doors, tilted the playing field, and entrenched power in the hands of the wealthy, white, and well-connected.

Consider the record. Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008), upheld Indiana’s strict voter ID law. The state could not point to a single example of the voter fraud it claimed to be preventing. What the law actually did was burden poor, elderly, and minority voters—those least likely to have government-issued identification. With this decision, the Roberts Court put its seal of approval on voter suppression, encouraging states to pass laws that systematically exclude inconvenient voters. Far from protecting the right to vote, the Court became an accomplice in undermining it.

Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), was a body blow to voting rights. The Court gutted the preclearance regime of the Voting Rights Act, one of the most effective civil rights tools in American history. Roberts claimed the formula was outdated,........

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