David Kaplan takes us inside the secret world of the Supreme Court and shows us how nine justices have subverted the role of the other branches of government—and how we’ve come to accept this at our peril. The court is so crucial that some voters in 2016 selected a presidential candidate based on who that candidate would likely appoint. Donald Trump picked Neil Gorsuch and now Brett Kavanaugh, both potential swing votes on social policies such as abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control, campaign finance and voting rights. Kaplan asks: Is that really how democracy is supposed to work? 

Based on exclusive interviews with the justices and their law clerks, Kaplan will provide fresh details about life behind the scenes—Clarence Thomas’s simmering rage, Antonin Scalia’s death, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s celebrity. Kaplan presents a sweeping narrative of the justices’ aggrandizement of power over the decades, and he demonstrates that the arrogance of the court isn’t partisan: Conservative and liberal justices alike are guilty of overreach.