Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today's Supreme Court - Hardcover

Isgur, Sarah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593800923 ISBN 13: 9780593800928

Publisher: Crown, 2026

Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A myth-busting glimpse into the inner workings of the Supreme Court, revealing what we get wrong about the Roberts Court, what the justices' clerks gossip about, and how to fix a court in crisis—from the popular ABC news pundit and top legal podcaster

"Isgur has all your answers in these smart, snappy, clear-eyed pages.”
—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

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.

The ultimate insider, Isgur takes readers on a deep dive inside the Supreme Court: how cases land at the Court’s doorstep, which justices attend clerk happy hours (and which ones even bother showing up to the office), why conservatives already have buyer’s remorse about Amy Coney Barrett, and how the whole judicial system is kind of a constitutional anomaly. She’ll even help you decide whether you should throw your hat in the ring and go to law school! Blending irreverent humor and incisive commentary, Isgur goes underneath the robes—and shows us what we need to do to preserve the rule of law amid dicey times in this little self-governing experiment we’ve been running for the last 250 years.

About this title

About the Author

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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

The Snails of Justice

When asked to explain what he does for a living, Justice Stephen Breyer likes to invoke a story he once read in a French newspaper. The article detailed an incident in which a junior high teacher was traveling by train from Nantes to Paris with a basketful of live snails. (Yes, snails. It’s a very French story.)

A sign on the train read, “All animals on the train must be in a basket and must pay half fare.” The conductor pointed to the sign and tapped the fare box. Outraged, the man protested, But they’re . . . snails?!

Does “animals” include snails? Putting aside the fact that Snailgate occurred an ocean away, answering that question, according to Justice Breyer, perfectly encapsulates what the Supreme Court does.

So, how would you answer the question?

Perhaps there’s more information you’d want to know? Maybe you want to know what the local authorities intended when they established the fare rules? What if the state senator who proposed the bill in question touted it as a way to allow cats and small dogs to ride the train— hence mandating baskets—while preventing large dogs that might slobber or poop? Snails don’t cause those problems, so they don’t fit into the drafter’s purpose for the law.

Or what if the original draft read “mammals” but was changed to “animals” before it passed? That could mean they meant to include more than common pets at least. What if there had been a proposed amendment to the bill that would have read “animals, including cats, dogs, rabbits, reptiles, and amphibians” but the amendment failed in committee? The fact that it failed might mean that they didn’t want to include snails. Then again, the fact that it was proposed could mean that at least one legislator did. Was leaving it at “animals” part of some compromise we don’t have a record of?

What, you may wonder, is the history of regulating animals on trains? What if, after the law passed, a restaurateur with a taste for frog legs had traveled on the train for years with live frogs in a box and had never paid the fare? That could mean that the people who implemented the law never expected it to include animals like snails.

What if the sign on the train came at the president’s orders and corresponding law just said, “The president may decide the rules for who can ride on the train.” Does the “who” in the statute mean that the president had the discretion to make rules about animals and people—or did he exceed his authority?

Or maybe you don’t care about the answer to any of those questions. After all, as a citizen, you really just want to know what’s allowed on the train. A headline the next day that read “Supreme Court Holds That Snails Aren’t Allowed on Trains” would be enough for you. But maybe you, too, are a snail aficionado—or even the CEO of Big Snail. You’d probably prefer a headline that read, “Supreme Court Holds That Congress Didn’t Give President Authority to Ban Snails from Train.” Now your task is clear: Lobby Congress to allow certain animals on the train. Or you can vote against the snail-hating president when he runs for a second term.

But what if the information on hand was scant. What if all we have is the text of that original sign: “All animals on the train must be in a basket and must pay half fare.”

What would you say then?

With only that to go by, Justice Breyer would not include snails as animals. He’d say that the purpose of the law was clearly to include pets like dogs and cats, not snails. I asked him why, and he told me, “If you wanted me to really go into the answer to that question, I don’t know. And we’ll never find out, because the railroad company reimbursed the poor teacher for his expenditure.”

He dodged the question in his most perfect Justice Breyer way. As for me? I would include snails as animals for the very simple reason that snails are animals. It’s not absurd to think that the legislature might have wanted to charge anyone bringing a basket of live animals on the train. Perhaps they thought that people were more likely to put the basket on the seat next to them or that the smell might annoy their neighbors. Or maybe they didn’t think about it at all. That’s fine too. Regardless, if the legislature didn’t mean to include snails or their constituents are up in arms, there’s a very simple solution: They should amend the law to say what they meant. Mammals? Pets? A judge’s job, in my view, is not to guess. Snails are animals, and the rest is an issue for the elected politicians who make the laws.

Justice Breyer prefers standards. I prefer rules. Standards are flexible. “Don’t drive dangerously fast.” But what if an officer tends to think women are more likely to be dangerous drivers than men at the same speed? Standards can be applied unfairly when the same situations are treated differently. As people see standards being applied unfairly, they tend to agitate for rules. Rules are rigid. “The speed limit is sixty-five.” But rules applied too rigidly can also be unfair. If your wife is in labor and you’re trying to get to the hospital going seventy miles per hour, most of us would likely agree we don’t need you to pay the same speeding ticket as the teenager who was swerving around traffic at the same speed. Rules can be applied unfairly when different situations are treated the same.

The balance between rules and standards is one way we think about different legal philosophies and what constraints judges should have. In today’s world, Justice Breyer’s reading of the sign would be considered liberal because it takes into account our current views on snails and the legislature’s purpose. My view would be considered conservative because I started with the text, and because “animals” is an unambiguous word with a clear definition, I stopped with the text.

But while we describe those philosophies as liberal and conservative, they don’t have anything to do with partisan outcomes. Asking people whether snails are animals would not be a very good predictor of whether those people identify as Democrats or Republicans. And yet we often feel that they do correspond to partisan outcomes.

Why is that?

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593800923
• ISBN 13: 9780593800928
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416