Author Talk: Sarah Isgur — Last Branch Standing- with Jonathan Karl

Author Sarah Isgur discusses their book "Last Branch Standing" at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.

Most people get the Supreme Court all wrong. A smattering of high-profile decisions have popularized a simplistic idea of the Court and its justices. Yes, six of them were appointed by Republicans, and only three by Democrats. So, how does that 6-3 conservative majority explain why in the 2024-25 term, conservative Brett Kavanaugh was more likely to agree with liberal Elena Kagan than conservative Neil Gorsuch? Or why the court threw shade at Florida’s attempt to ban drag shows?

To truly understand the Court, argues Sarah Isgur, you have to look beyond partisan politics—the “X-Axis.” The wisest court watchers apply another measuring stick, the “Y-Axis," where the nine justices span from order-loving institutionalists to true chaos agents. Once you appreciate these overlapping and even competing impulses, the Court begins to look a lot more like a 3-3-3 split than 6-3.

Sarah Isgur is the editor of SCOTUSblog, a regular on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and co-host of Advisory Opinions, the nation's top legal podcast. She served in the DOJ as the director of the Office of Public Affairs, helped run Carly Fiorina’s presidential campaign, and clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones of the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. She’s a graduate of Harvard Law School and Northwestern University.

Isgur is in conversation with Jonathan Karl, the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News and co-anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Karl has covered every major beat in Washington, D.C., including the White House, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the State Department. He has reported from the White House under four presidents and fourteen press secretaries. He is a former president of the White House Correspondents' Association.

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