Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights

by Lisa Graves

“A devastating, passionate takedown of Chief Justice John Roberts's Supreme Court by a Washington insider.” —Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money

In the last twenty years the US Supreme Court has radically curtailed voting rights, undermined anti-corruption measures, encouraged extreme political gerrymandering, restricted the regulation of guns, and obliterated the constitutional right to control one’s reproductive choices. This transformation was orchestrated by a billionaire-backed reactionary political movement, whose interests Chief Justice John Roberts has been all too willing to serve.

Without Precedent explodes the falsehood that Roberts is a fair-minded institutionalist who works to blunt the worst impulses of other Republican appointees to the court when, in fact, he has led the rightward transformation of the court’s jurisprudence while presiding over the most corrupt and corrupted Supreme Court in American history.

Informed by Lisa Graves’s experience working on judicial issues for all three branches of the federal government, and based on years of intensive research, Without Precedent not only exposes Roberts as the reactionary politician in robes he has always been but delivers a vigorous plan of judicial reform designed to overcome the divisive, discriminatory, destructive, and anti-democratic machinations of the Roberts court. 
 

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Law

309 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 30, 2025

Reviews

[Jenn the Readaholic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, if you thought Roberts was awful before, this book succinctly outlines just HOW MUCH WORSE he really, truly is for America and the American people. Well, for the non-megarich American people, anyway. I mean, I remember the 2000 election and the outcome, as well as who helped orchestrate that mess. I remember not wanting him even on the Court, much less as the Chief Justice. And I didn’t know the half of it. Seriously.

This is a man who truly believes he’s above the law. Above the Constitution. Above any and all norms and legal precedents or practices. As long as he wants it, he makes it so. He doesn’t care who he steps on, what he upends, or the damage done as long as he obtains all the power possible. He’s 100% a Project 2025 proponent. He’s absolutely a bigot. But he has disdain for anyone not born on third base, rounding home. And it shows all too clearly. Even more so now.

So I have to hope for good in the future. Because as long as Roberts, his Opus Dei and Project 2025 cronies, and the Republican far-right extremists are at the wheel, we’re up a creek. And that creek will likely be full of contaminated water soon enough, too.

[Thomas Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Without Precedent: How Chief Justice John Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights, Lisa Graves, 2025, 358 pages, Dewey 347.732634, ISBN 9781645030676.


An excerpt here: https://zeteo.com/p/how-chief-justice...


A strength of this book is in making clear that it has been a very few obscenely-wealthy men behind the successful efforts to remake the U.S. judiciary to serve wealth at the expense of everyone else. p. 96.

Also clues us in to the partisan political nature of our federal judge-selection process. Senators can and do refuse to fill court vacancies under an opposition-party president. pp. 62-66, 80, 141, 149. Republican senators may allow a Democratic president to pick a justice, but only an older one, so he or she won't serve long. p. 33.


The Supreme Court chooses its cases: 60 to 80 a year heard, out of 8,000 to 9,000 available. Right-wing organizations tee up a flood of cases for the Court to use to give more rights to wealth and power, fewer rights to the rest of us. pp. 40-41.


GRAFT

Billionaires with business before the Court lavish gifts on Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and other pro-billionaire justices. Alito's and Thomas's wives work with right-wing organizations to effect pro-billionaire judicial decisions. The law requires that justices disqualify themselves from any case in which they have a conflict of interest. Roberts doesn't enforce that law, and violates it himself. pp. 7-10, 47-56, 78, 92, 103, 111-116, 120-125, 128-133, 137, 140, 144, 164-165. In Snyder v. United States, 2024, the six Republican justices made bribery and corruption legal. pp. 151-153. pdf: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions... Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissent is at p. 23 of 44.


GUNS

Each year, the U.S. gun industry manufactures 7 million guns (not counting for the military) and takes in $9 billion, while gun violence kills more than 40,000 people in America and wounds twice as many. Guns are the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens. (5% of U.S.-made guns are exported, while another 7 million guns are imported from foreign manufacturers. The U.S. has 400 million guns and 335 million people.) In 2008, the Roberts Court created an individual right to bear arms, overturning centuries of precedent giving the right only to state militias. The Court invalidated handgun bans everywhere in the U.S. (but not in the Supreme Court building). There can now be no gun restrictions that weren't on the books in 1791. p. 169. Scalia said he would not rule out a right to bear hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes. p. 165. pp. 158-175. https://www.everytown.org/issues/


1989-1993 Roberts enforced right-wing political doctrine as deputy solicitor general under G.H.W. Bush. Roberts wrote that the abortion-access rights conferred by Roe v. Wade are wrong. pp. 36-38.

1992.01 G.H.W. Bush nominated Roberts to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC circuit--but Joe Biden, Senate Judiciary Committee chair, didn't move the nomination to a confirmation vote, so Roberts would wait until G.W. Bush's presidency for the job. Republican senators refused to fill judgeships during the Clinton presidency, to keep the seats open for a Republican president to fill. pp. 49, 54, 62, 65-66, 71, 75-96.

2000.11-12 Lawyers John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett helped G.W. Bush fight the Florida recount. Republican U.S. Supreme Court justices Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor, and Kennedy stopped the recount of votes in Florida, which had been reducing George W. Bush's margin of victory over Al Gore. Dissenting were Stevens, Ginsberg, Breyer, Souter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v.... The Florida supreme court had on 2000.12.08 ordered a manual recount: vote-tabulation machines had failed to count 61,000 ballots. On 2000.12.09, the Republican justices stopped the recount, and on 2000.12.12 declared Bush the winner. 2001.01, Bush staff started implementing right-wing Heritage Foundation plans. Termites are now in charge of the treehouse. pp. 2-3, 47-56.

2001.05 G.W. Bush nominated Roberts (as had his father, unsuccessfully, nine years earlier) to the DC circuit court, on the recommendation of the right-wing Federalist Society. Roberts assumed office in 2003. pp. 4, 54-57.

2004.12-2005.07 While Roberts was interviewing for the Supreme Court job, he was deciding a case in favor of the G.W. Bush administration, deciding that a driver for al Qaeda wasn't entitled to Geneva Convention protections. Roberts violated federal law by refusing to disqualify himself from the case. He broke the law, gave Bush his preferred ruling, and got the Supreme Court job. pp. 111-116.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

2005.09.29 Senate confirmed John Roberts as chief justice. pp. 4, 13, 20.

2006.01.31 Samuel Alito succeeded Sandra Day O'Connor, wrenching the court to the right on abortion, race, religion, and women's rights. p. 27.

2006.02.21 Roberts Court accepted a case to overturn a 2000 precedent and ban late-term abortions, Gonzalez v Carhart. p. 27.

2006.11 Roberts scheduled oral arguments in the so-called partial-birth abortion case for the day after election day, ensuring airplay. p. 39

2007.04 The Roberts Court reversed precedent, gave states power to restrict abortion access. p. 39.

2010-present Billionaires and corporations unleash a flood of cash to get their way in elections, after the Roberts Court Citizens United decision. pp. 7-8.

2021.01.06 Donald Trump incited an insurrection at the Capitol in D.C., calling on a mob to use violence to stop the legitimate transfer of power to the incoming administration. The mob killed several people. Roberts's Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on 2024.07.01 that Trump was above the law. This rewrites the Constitution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v... pp. 116-120, 124, 127-128, 307-309.

2022 Court overturned Roe v. Wade. p. 167.

2025.09 This book published.


LISA GRAVES https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gr... (wikipedia has little of the following resumé:)

True North Research executive director https://truenorthresearch.org

2018-2022 Documented.net founder https://documented.net pp. 91, 101-104, 107-108, 146.

2009-2017 Center for Media and Democracy executive director. https://www.exposedbycmd.org pp. 125-127.

2005 American Civil Liberties Union senior legislative strategist for national security. p. 3.

2002.01-2005 U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee chief counsel for nominations for Sen. Patrick Leahy. pp. 1-3, 5, 59-64, 77-87, 125-126, 146.

2001.05-2001.12 Anticorruption lawyer in the federal judiciary. p. 58-60.

1998-2001.05. Lawyer in Department of Justice policy office. 2001.01 deputy assistant attorney general. pp. 47, 53-54, 58-59, 61-62, 65, 165-166.

1993 summer associate at DC law offices of Kirkland & Ellis, under Ken Starr. pp. 31-36.

1967 born. p. 32.


SEE ALSO

/Justice on the Brink: The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the
Rise of Amy Coney Barrett, and Twelve Months that Transformed the Supreme Court/, Linda Greenhouse, 2021. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

And others:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...


WEBSITES

ProPublica https://www.propublica.org

Accountable.us https://accountable.us

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded down. 3.0 stars period at the end of my thoughts, per the bottom. Little new for a deep reader. I hadn't before read the details of Gorsuch's frat-boy college life, but could have found them elsewhere, and didn't know that Barrett, as well as Roberts and Kavanaugh, was involved with Bush v. Gore work.

And, that's it.

It's written from the left hand of the duopoly.

And, as a non-duopoly voter (and no, I didn't "really" vote for Trump; shut up), it's got holes.

Take the "god" chapter. Never mentions the Bladensberg Cross case (technically American Legion v American Humanist Association, nor Breyer's disastrous concurring opinion (with Kagan riding along), written in part, IMO, to make his opinion in Van Orton into precedent.

Or, beyond "god," take the "First Amendment" chapter.

I'm sorry, there is none. So we don't get to read the reality of Ginsburg bagging on Colin Kaepernick and other issues.

Beyond that, Democratic-appointed justices past and present have at times been squishes on civil rights and related issues, especially if they involve people arrested for crimes. So far, Ketanji Brown Jackson has been pretty good, but who knows if that will last. (Related? Don't forget that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act was passed while the Slickster was prez. The Senate could have easily overriden a veto, but he might have gotten enough representatives to change their minds to sustain. That, of course, was just one of several issues where Clinton squished out in 1996.)

And, IMO, contra the author, this is as serious issue as Congress, in 1988, passing the Supreme Court Case Selections Act of 1988 that, as cited by her, lessened the Supreme Court's mandatory cases. But, Reagan was president in 1988, so from a duopoly framework, it's easier to bag on this than bag on Clinton.

This Wiki page shows a decline in rulings before 1988 that moderately accelerated for a few years after that, but looked like the decline might be slowing down again, until after 1996.

Finally, per her epilogue, and the background to it, Trump v United States, one can indeed argue it was wrongly decided, but the ruling was not 100 percent de novo. Related? Blame the Nixon Administration's Office of Legal Counsel within the DOJ for wrongly claiming that sitting presidents can't be indicted, and blame John Sirica and Leon Jaworski for accepting that idea. See here.

In other words, the idea of the president as king has a longer history than Graves presents, and the left hand of the duopoly, or at least people touted by it, have played their part in making that what it is.

I could rate it lower than 3.0 stars, and I could give it the mendaciousness tag, but I'm holding off. Graves believes these things sincerely, so I won't accuse her of conscious mendaciousness. Yes, I could say "Mendacity," but I used the other word for my bookshelf and besides, I'm an editor; I can invent that word. For similar reasons, it didn't get the "disappointment" tag but it DID get the "meh" tag. Otherwise, I won't rate it lower than 3 stars because it's good for showing how the left hand of the two-party duopoly can go down a tribalist road.

[Keith Swenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fascinating book. Graves connects all the dots to give you a behind the scenes look and the twists and turns that the supreme court has been taking in recent years. If you have felt confounded by recent decisions, consider this book as the guide to lay bare the motivations for their actions.

How it all came about: The book naturally gives a good coverage of the Federalist Society and the founder Leonard Leo who was involved in all of the supreme court justice picks from the Republicans in the last 20 years, and John Roberts was one of his. We all remember Merrit Garland nomination dragging on for more than 12 months while Obama was president, while the next justice confirmed in a few weeks just before Trump left office. This well crafted movement has literally changed the course of US history.

He attacks voting rights: It can take years sometimes for a case to make its way to the supreme court, but sometimes it is very quick. Take for example when Colorado decided to leave Trump off the ballot, and miraculously a couple week later the supreme court has a ruling on that. On the other hand, decisions on unfair hyper-partisan gerrymandering in South Carolina were delayed month after months until after the election that favored the Republicans. The book outlines these cases with the facts and detail that make it clear that Roberts has an agenda, and that is to bring Christianity into the US government.

He has personally attacked women's health rights: Within a couple months of arriving at the supreme court he was already started by deciding cases that weakened women's rights for contraception and abortion. Steadily case by case this was weakened until the crowing achievement of overruling Roe vs Wade. He ruled that Hobby Lobby can legitimately prevent employees from using benefits for birth control.

He helps the rich get richer: If you consider of the last 134 votes the justices have made, 132 of them fell along simple lines: the Republican judges all voted for corporate interests, while the liberal judges voted for worker's rights. That is not surprising when you consider that the Koch brothers are funding the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation which backs this agenda. When it came to reversing decision by lower courts, it reversed only two cases that favored corporate interested, while in the same period reversing 50 cases favoring plaintiffs or government.

He helps politicians get kickbacks: Have you wondered how it is legal for Donald Trump to brazenly amass a personal fortune in the last 9 months, look no further than the Roberts court ruling in 2024 making it OK for elected officials to receive large "thank you" donations for doing good work. Even donation to the tune of 400 million dollars from foreign countries. A few years ago that would have been illegal, but it is all OK now.

He helps the polluters pollute: Remember when the court found that the EPA had no right to regulate carbon as an emission. That was based on an entirely invented new concept of "major question doctrine" which appears nowhere in the constitution and never in any prior case.

He attacks the little guy: You might remember Biden attempting to forgive student load. No citizens were harmed by this, but the politicians of six state trumped up a suit and in no time at all Roberts took it upon himself to write the decision striking down the decision for load dept relief under Covid.

The list goes on and on, and I am not going to repeat the entire book here. You have to read it to believe the depth of coordination that is behind empowering the corporate elite, and diminishing rights for common Americans. It is all hidden under a patina of being Mr Nice Guy, but don't be fooled.

[Richard Jaffe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Bold Type Books for this advance ARC in return for an honest review.

Without Precedent is a well researched look at how Chief Justice Roberts and the dark money donors including the Koch Brothers and Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society have hijacked the Supreme Court and destroyed our democracy with politically driven decisions ignoring decades of precedent and the Legal Doctrine of stare decisis.

I knew this Court was the most corrupt Supreme Court in our Nation's history but until Lisa Graves laid it all out in this concise manner I had no idea how cold and calculated the dismantling our most sacred rights and beliefs was by the Chief Justice and the power brokers he so shamelessly serves.

As a Trial Litigator, the most important job for an Attorney is to "win" at the Trial Court level as the Appellate Courts are supposed to rely upon the Fact Findings of the Trial Court Judge ( or jury ) and only address errors of law or unconstitutional rulings. In some of the most egregious Decisions of the "Roberts Court" the corrupt Justices including Thomas, Alito and the Trump appointees, Gorsich, Kavanaugh and Barrett have ignored the facts ( and even the Laws ) applied by the Lower Courts in order to create new Laws not contemplated by the Statutes or the Constitution of the USA.

Although most of these Catholic/Republican Justices swore before the Senate that they would follow precedent ( stare decisis ) and not let their religious beliefs or Political Affiliations influence their Decisions, with the backing of the dark money they have dismantled Voting Rights, the Regulatory Authority of Federal Agencies, allowed Trump to have absolute immunity, not to mention overturning Roe v. Wade. It was this latter ruling on abortion that was the main focus of the Federalist Society, but as it got more powerful , due to influx of millions of dollars from corporate donations, it took on an even more ominous task to destroy the rights of citizens in favor of the corporations, this centuries robber barons of the past.

Graves does a wonderful job of breaking down the various ways in which the Chief Justice has ignored basic principals like recusal of a jurist by insuring that the Supreme Court remains unchecked by Ethics rules that every other Federal Judge must abide by, to allow Thomas and Alito to rule on January 6 cases and Trumps criminal charges, despite more than just the appearance of impropriety, in order to serve his true masters, the almighty dollars of the dark money donors and the Republican Party.

If you can stomach reading about this incredible level of corruption, I highly recommend Without Precedent.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25 stars.

huge disclaimer here that i (1) am a lawyer and (2) essentially agree with everything in this book. but god, what a slog.

if you’re new to this subject, you might find it interesting to explore all of the tendrils that weird little right wing guys have put into SCOTUS and the political apparatus at large. but if you’ve already been aware of this - like many attorneys/politics types/people paying attention have for like, 50 years - this is not particularly new or shocking information. in any case, i found that this was less about john roberts than it was discussing weird little guys and then mentioning roberts every once in a while. which makes sense, right, because SCOTUS is so insular that we don’t often know the horse trading and maneuvering that goes on, so how can we really assign roberts to any one malevolent action? you’re forced to make conclusory statements about what “he and his court are doing” rather than factual assignments of individual blame. no doubt he sucks and has always sucked. but when the book is supposed to be How John Robert’s Personally Fucked Up America and then you spend the vast majority of time talking about Leonard Leo, I think your framing is somewhat undercut.

and, man, with love… this needed another editor’s pass. it should have been 100 pages shorter and reorganized. i know we attorneys like to talk but jesus i did not need this level of repetition. this would have been a significantly stronger book if it plotted out 3-4 major issues john roberts sucks on (e.g., voting rights, religion, abortion) then interwoven the dark money funding, the political history, etc. throughout. it would have avoided needing to repeat the same basic claims over and over again and reminding the reader 50x who is in the same networks with whom.

again. i really agree with everything put forth here. and there were some fascinating tidbits and juicy reporting. but the way it was presented really needed tightening. anyway ASCJAB (all supreme court justices are bastards) bye

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lisa Graves has written an excellent book making the case that Judge Roberts is a Far Right GOP Operative and always has been. She presents her case from her own first hand experience working as Chief Counsel for Nominations on the United States Senate Judiciary Committee under Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), in addition to extensive research into Roberts’ career and cases.

This past week Roberts attained his coup de grâce by killing the Voting Rights Act by gutting Section 2 prohibiting local governments from denying or limiting the right to vote based on race, color, or language minority status. It took him 40 years, but he played the long game and did it. While he has he has been good at curbing the GOP’s worse instincts that would create huge backlashes to the party (i.e. his vote to not eliminating the ACA), I think he has misjudged the fury this has decision has unleashed in Americans writ large.

Roberts can forget about his coveted Legacy. At the end of her book Graves says he will go down as the worst Justice in the history of the Court. He may also go down as the most corrupt, as recent credible allegations have been made that he and his wife have taken $20 million from firms he rules on, and a formal call for his disbarment has been filed.

A must read for anyone who values our Democracy and Rule of Law.

[Regan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read. It's about half memoir of Ms. Graves career and almost half how John Roberts has helped to destroy the constitution. There are segments about what Alito and Thomas have done to aid and abet Roberts's efforts to become the power behind the throne, but she shows how he plotted the course to where we are today. What kind of turned me off is she gives full titles and names of authors who she refers to but in one case where she says. That was Justice on Trial by Carrie Severino. All she says is that Severino co-authored it, but doesn't cite to the book. There are no source notes at the end but I was able to find the book by searching on the author's name. There is some self-serving in Without Precedent, some quips that made me chuckle. It reads much like a text book which recommends it to law students who start out bright eyed and then go into constitutional law classes where the bright side of the court is on display, but not where it has destroyed what our founders fought so hard for.

[Madison ✨ (mad.lyreading) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author, Lisa Graves, worked in the political world, aiding congressmen in choosing to vote for or against judicial nominees at the time of Roberts's rise. This book felt like Graves writing about her hatred of Roberts in the burn book, and I mean that positively. She makes the (correct!) argument that Roberts has worked hard to make a show of being politically neutral while actually doing everything in his power to orchestrate a fairly right-wing political agenda. I think journalists often put their focus on Alito and Thomas because they make it easy to through their blatant partisanship and clear examples of bias in cases they are hearing. However, Graves truly opened my eyes to the monster that is Roberts, and my biggest complaint about this book is that it wasn't written sooner.

Thank you to PublicAffairs and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Ted Haussman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why does the Supreme Court almost always overturn lower court rulings and side with Trump and big business? This book explains why and how the Supreme Court has been captured and perverted by the wealthiest 1 percent and why Chief Justice Roberts, while cultivating an outward appearance of fairness, is instead incrementally driving his political agenda to the detriment of us all. It also demonstrates that the
MAGA 6 “originalists” are the real activist judges, making up executive immunity and “major questions” doctrines out of thin air, to elide their way to the result they desire. Rather than follow the statutes or give credence to the factual record below, the MAGA 6 will ignore all of that to foster its legal coup agenda.

It’s terribly depressing but also a call of action to reform and push back on rulings that seek to elevate capitalist profit over the well being of humankind.

[John Harvard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting insights into the backgrounds of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court and the purported rationale behind their decisions, especially those of the Chief Justice. The author is a former democratic staffer who worked on the Senate judiciary committee. There is no question that with the polarizing decisions being made by the current conservative Supreme Court like allowing unlimited amounts of PAC money, immunity for sitting Presidents from acts committed during office, etc., a democratic staffer would be highly critical of the conservative justices. However, it does have several interesting pieces of information, which go to show the extent of influence certain outsiders and interests have on the highest court in the land.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

The conduct of Roberts and other justices draws Graves’s ire and scorn, as she tackles numerous wrongdoings by Roberts and other justices with research and scathing analysis. She catalogues his decisions rendered to support Republicans and those in power in the United States and against those who are powerless, who hope for justice but are harshly turned away by the Roberts court. She presents how Roberts and others dissembled before the Senate committee during the hearings on the nominations. The corruption of certain justices by their acceptance of expensive gifts is outlined. Graves offers some of her remedies for stopping the vested interests in this country influencing the court, such as term limits for the justices. Definitely a book for those concerned about the court’s conduct and where it is going and who wonder whether there is any hope for better.

[Ed Sommer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe it was his non-threatening appearance and demeanor, or his gentle manner of speaking, but for some reason I always believed that, although he was obviously conservative, John Roberts was also a reasonable person who was not an existential threat to our democracy.

Over the years, the veil has been lifted from my eyes. I’ve seen his court deliver the worst set of Supreme Court decisions in our long history, including (among others) decisions (i) restricting a woman’s right to make reproductive choices, (ii) allowing corporations to make unlimited contributions to political campaigns, (iii) eroding the separation of church and state, (iv) granting Donald Trump and future presidents almost unlimited immunity from prosecution, (v) enabling states to effectively disenfranchise targeted (generally minority) citizens, (vi) undermining the ability of administrative agencies to enact regulations to implement crucial protections of our health, safety and welfare, and (vii) putting more guns on our streets.

In Without Precedent, Graves makes the case that, contrary to Roberts’s assertion that he is merely an umpire “calling balls and strikes,” he is a reactionary with a career-long objective of inflicting upon the United States a right-wing political agenda. Through extensive research, personal experience and clear, well-organized writing, Graves presents more than enough evidence in support of her portrayal of Roberts as a cynical, hyper-partisan jurist. I found that, over and over, her arguments rang true.

Graves also lays out, in systematic detail, the rife corruption at the Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas is (of course) easy pickings here, but the book also highlights shameful examples of corruption by other justices, including Roberts.

I particularly appreciated that Graves organized Without Precedent by issue (guns, abortion, religion, voting, etc.), rather than strictly chronologically. In addition to making her analysis easier to follow, this helped me refresh my recollection of the history of these issues.

I highly recommend Without Precedent for anyone who is interested in how the Supreme Court has brought us to where we are today. And you don’t need to be a lawyer or policy nerd to read and understand this book. It is written with such logic and clarity that it will lift the veil from the eyes of any citizen who might otherwise be willing to give the benefit of the doubt to John Roberts and his conservative brethren on the Supreme Court.

[Dennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been a fan/follower of Lisa Graves for years as she appears regularly on The Nicole Sandler Show. She is so smart and communicates her ideas and analysis in such a succinct manner on that show, and I was happy to see that she did the same thing in her book. It is a fascinating look at just how much Roberts has manipulated things while convincing (duping?) the American public that he is an "umpire calling balls and strikes". The fact that mainstream media/reporting has never educated the public on Leonard Leo is astonishing to me. Thank goodness for people like Lisa Graves doing the hard work to save our judicial system and educated us about it.

[Natalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lisa Graves digs into how the U.S. Supreme Court has been shaped by right-wing influence and corporate money. Graves, a former Justice Department official and Senate staffer, exposes how groups like the Federalist Society and billionaires like the Koch network have helped build a judiciary that serves conservative interests over public ones.
It’s part investigative journalism, part historical analysis, and it highlights how this captured Court has eroded democratic norms and civil rights under the guise of "originalism."

[Betty Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written by an attorney who worked within the power structure of our government, this work identifies the many betrayals perpetrated by court decisions that strip us of many rights we took for granted. The author was present during the years that wealthy men promoted judges that would make favorable decisions. She also offers assessment of the failures and faults of Supreme Court justices

[Keshav · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of the book, the level of research, and the new things I learned from reading made this a book I can recommend. However, it was a PAINFUL read.

So many sections stretched or dragged without any purpose other driving a point home that she had already made a page or two before. I had meant for this to be a weeklong read and it turned into a battle to get it done in under a month.

[Nancy Way · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not finish this book. I'm sure it's well documented, etc. But the intro was so depressing that I couldn't move forward. I did flip to the end and found a solid , "to do" list for those who want to preserve our democracy

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and concise. Superb documentation. The sudden burst of oligarch criminality to destroy democracy and take over the largest economy and military in human history. May they all be impeached and imprisoned soon

[Dean Kraft · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye opening look at the ultra conservative billionaire takeover of the US.

[Tinsley Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5🌟 crazy well researched I just am kind of a Supreme Court nerd and it gets repetitive!! However I deeply respect her hatred for John Robert’s

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough accounting of misdeeds.