Join my conversation with Joan Biskupic as we discuss her new book, Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court’s Drive to the Right and its Historic Consequences.

Our topics include an analysis of some of the Court’s most explosive issues including abortion and LBGTQ+ rights, gerrymandering and voting/ballot access, and free exercise of religion cases as well as the impact of the three Trump appointed justices have had on the court and what they portend for the future of the court.

About The Guest

Michael: Joan, you’re one of the more storied Supreme Court reporters in the country. Please give us a little background about yourself.

Joan: You know, I often kid that the justices are appointed for life, and the journalists think they are too, because so many of us come to this feed and cannot leave it. I just love it.

And I have worked for so many different publications. But I have just not let this beat. And in the meantime, I also got a law degree on the side.

My first confirmation hearing was the Clarence Thomas confirmation back in 1991. I was covering the court then. And I was working for something called Congressional Quarterly with some of your audience might know a lot of people on the Hill use it. It was the Congressional Quarterly news magazine. And from there after my Clarence Thomas coverage, I was picked up by the Washington Post to be its Supreme Court correspondent. And that was in 1992.

And just to let people know, kind of what was happening in my life, I was still in the middle of night law school, that was back in the era where you didn't have the 24/7 news cycle. So I was going to Georgetown on the side at night. And I had a newborn baby, my baby was also born in 92. So I have been covering this cord full time since then. And you know, did the Post in the 90s, switched to USA Today. And book writing in the early 2000s, became an editor in charge for Legal Affairs at Reuters, at the end of 2011, and then went out to teach in California at had a visiting professorship at the University of California, Irvine. And that's when CNN picked me up as a contributor.

But then when I came back to DC, instead of returning to my job at Reuters, I went full time at CNN, I have what I think many of my colleagues regard as the best Supreme Court gig, because I get to go up to the court, watch all the oral arguments, write about what goes on behind the scenes, and keep up with it on a daily basis, but not be our daily reporter, I get to pull back on the one who's lucky enough to do the analysis, as you know, and why we're even here, I've been able to write these books on the side.

I feel really fortunate with the gig I've got and I've been really happy with CNN that, you know, cable TV wants this kind of full time coverage. And so that's been my journalism side. But then, as I know, you know, Michael, but I'll tell the audience, my first book on an individual justice came out in 2005. And that was my biography of Sandra Day O'Connor. And then I did Justice Antonin Scalia. Then I did the political history of the Sonia Sotomayor nomination. And then a book that I think a lot of your audience remembers is the 2019 book I did on Chief Justice John Roberts. And then that brings us up to date with this group portrait and the justices as they are now.