Justice Elena Kagan has stepped up her public criticism of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, delivering a pointed assessment just two weeks before the midterm elections.
Speaking at Catholic University’s law school, Kagan told the audience that the Court has fundamentally damaged how the American political system functions for ordinary citizens.
The justice, known for sharp dissents and precise legal reasoning, did not hold back her diagnosis when discussing the majority’s record of rulings on democratic participation.
“The court has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effect of their rulings on how the political system works and has created a democracy that does not work as well as it should,” Kagan said.
The remarks carry particular weight coming from Kagan, who has long positioned herself as a committed institutionalist and a defender of the Court’s legitimacy as an independent body.
Her conversation partner at the Catholic University event was law professor J. Joel Alicea, a former clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, meaning the forum was hardly a friendly or sympathetic one for such a critique.
Kagan has previously been careful to push back against characterisations of the Court as politically captured, telling a room of Ninth Circuit judges in July that calling it a Trump validation machine was “a bad rap.”
On Tuesday she revisited that framing, calling the rubber-stamp charge a “bum rap,” suggesting she still resists the most sweeping versions of that criticism even as she sharpens her own.
The significance of the timing is hard to ignore, with Kagan choosing to make these remarks in a public, on-the-record setting less than a fortnight before voters head to the polls in the midterm elections.
Kagan has built a reputation for dissents that legal observers and general readers return to repeatedly, including her memorable description of the major questions doctrine as a collection of “get-out-of-text-free cards.”
Her willingness to now go further in public forums signals a shift in how one of the Court’s most respected liberal voices is willing to frame the majority’s impact on democratic governance.
The remarks will likely intensify an already heated national debate about the role and direction of the Supreme Court heading into a politically charged election cycle.