Supreme Court

Ranking the Worst Supreme Court Decisions of All Time

What cases belong on the list?

Damon Root | 5.19.2026 7:00 AM

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(Illustration: Midjourney)

When Reason magazine celebrated its 50th anniversary back in 2018, I helped mark the occasion with a column about "the 5 worst Supreme Court rulings of the past 50 years," a list that featured destructive and far-reaching decisions on issues ranging from qualified immunity to eminent domain.

I got to thinking about that list when I noticed that yesterday was the 130th anniversary of one of the worst Supreme Court rulings of all time, the Court's notorious decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which upheld a Louisiana law that forbade railroad companies from selling first-class tickets to black passengers. The Supreme Court purported to justify this obvious violation of liberty on the grounds that "the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power" should not be subjected to meddlesome second-guessing by the judiciary.

Plessy is the case, of course, which enshrined the notorious pro-Jim Crow doctrine of "separate but equal," a doctrine that stood as the law of the land until the Supreme........

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