Sign up for Executive Dysfunction, a weekly newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story about how Trump is changing the law—or how the law is pushing back—and keeps you posted on the latest from Slate’s Jurisprudence team.

Earlier this month, SCOTUSblog hosted its annual Supreme Court “summit” in Washington. For nearly a quarter century, SCOTUSblog has been the go-to outlet for information about the court and its docket, which makes this event a hot ticket among law firm types with ambitious billable-hour targets. On its website, SCOTUSblog marketed the afternoon as a gathering of “leading voices in the legal community” discussing “what’s next for the Court.”

Highlights included a “fireside chat” with former Biden Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, now a partner at one of several Big Law firms that sponsored the event; a live taping of Advisory Opinions, a podcast hosted by the conservative pundits Sarah Isgur and David French; and a panel of the top lawyers at Boeing, TD Bank, and ExxonMobil, who were asked to weigh in on issues like whether the court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, has been “pro-” or “anti-business.” (A real head-scratcher, that one.)

In news that I am sure will astonish you, Big Business sees this Supreme Court as an honest broker when it comes to Big Business. Boeing’s Brett Gerry rejected both the “pro-” and “anti-” labels, instead describing the court as “nine justices who have well-developed, well-thought-through approaches to deciding cases.” ExxonMobil’s Jeffrey Taylor also demurred, saying that the justices are “calling it as best they can.” In a possibly related story, the court will hear oral argument in Suncor Energy v. Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County, in which ExxonMobil seeks protections from liability for exacerbating the harms of climate change, on the first day of the court’s new term—Monday, Oct. 5.

The transformation of SCOTUSblog from an indispensable Supreme Court resource to a platform for Fortune 500 companies to praise the justices’ balls-and-strikes bona fides has grim implications for the future of legal journalism, a field that is already in dire straits. But all of this—the summit’s ham-fistedly corporate-forward framing, its big-name guests, its elevation of commentators whose ideology largely aligns with the current court, and so on—bears little resemblance to the content that SCOTUSblog typically published in its early days. As it turns out, though, when the Supreme Court’s quasi-official news site is run by a high-profile lawyer who is also a high-stakes poker player facing years in federal prison, things can unravel really, really fast.

SCOTUSblog was founded in 2002 by Tom Goldstein and Amy Howe, a husband-and-wife team looking for creative ways to market their boutique law firm. Goldstein did not have the résumé of most of his peers in the Supreme Court bar: A mediocre student in college, he was admitted to the part-time program at American........

© Slate