Leftists can’t stand it that the Supreme Court is not currently helping them achieve their vision of a collectivist utopia, as it has at times in the past. Recently, we have gotten some slimy hit pieces alleging breaches of ethics on the part of Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. And there is also a new book out on the Court by Joan Biskupic, one that pretends to analyze it but is an intellectually empty attack on the justices she and her readers dislike.

You probably don’t want to spend the time reading it and neither do I. Fortunately, Northwestern University law professor John O. McGinnis has read it and offers his review today on Law & Liberty.

McGinnis writes, “Joan Biskupic’s Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court’s Drive to the Right and Its Historic Consequences exemplifies the many ways that journalists today hinder the transmission of the Roberts Court’s ideas. Despite presenting itself as an account of the Court’s development since 2016, the book rarely describes the jurisprudential wellsprings behind the Court’s decisions, and when it does describe them, it is incorrect and biased. It also flattens and caricatures the justices most frequently in the majority as political actors who are moving the law in the direction of their political patrons. It also tends to personalize the justices’ disagreements, rather than recognizing the profound and legitimate contests over the nature of law.”

Well, of course not. How is a lefty journalist going to sell books if she were to play fair intellectually? Her approach is cut from the same bolt of cloth as Nancy MacLean’s hatchet jobs against thinkers such as Milton Friedman and James Buchanan. McGinnis believes that those writing about the Supreme Court need to do much better than this, and it’s hard to disagree. Read the whole thing.