Billionaires Know Just How They Want Supreme Court Justices to Rule--and Are Spending Big to Tell Them

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“This is about really, really wealthy people who have very strong preferences for the direction of American law, and they don’t want to be out in the sunshine. They want to avoid any type of transparency,” says Paul Collins, a University of Massachusetts Amherst political scientist who studies the conservative legal movement. “It’s a multifaceted strategy,” he explains, with “the amicus curiae part of it as just a cog in a much larger machine.”

The amicus influence apparatus can be seen as a later phase of a decades-long, billionaire-funded operation to take control of the Supreme Court. It dates back to the George W. Bush administration, when, in late 2004, Federalist Society executive Leonard Leo convened a dinner in Washington, DC, whose guests included mortgage mogul Robin Arkley II and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Bush had just won his second term, and the goal of the meeting was to ensure he would be able to fill high court vacancies. At the restaurant, Leo seated Arkley next to Scalia—a taste of the access and influence the tycoon could have if he helped fund an effort to put more conservatives on the court.

Leo is a singular figure in American legal history; a friend to judges, billionaires, and corporations, with power and influence to pick Supreme Court justices and change the law through his extensive and well-financed right-wing network. The dinner sparked the creation of two groups that would spend millions to boost Bush’s nominees and later oppose President Barack Obama’s: the Judicial Confirmation Network and Judicial Education Project. They remain part of Leo’s now-expansive operation to install hardcore conservatives at every level of the state and federal courts, all funded by the deep pockets of America’s wealthiest tycoons. At the Supreme Court, Leo fought for justices who would shift the law in favor of business and the wealthy, overturn Roe v. Wade, and push conservative Christian values on all Americans. He was instrumental in orchestrating the confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito in 2005 and 2006, using JCN, which he had just helped establish with Arkley’s money.

During his first term, President Donald Trump brought Leo out from behind the curtain, entrusting him with drafting a list from which he would pick Supreme Court justices. And so we got Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Since Leo had also helped secure Justice Clarence Thomas’ 1991 confirmation, it’s safe to say that Leo has played a key role in creating the court’s Republican-appointed majority—the six justices who ended the right to abortion, gave Trump criminal immunity, destroyed the Voting Rights Act, and allowed nearly two dozen illegal policies to move forward in Trump’s first year back in office.

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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/06/supreme-court-amicus-briefs-investigation/

The Supreme Court problem must be addressed!!! Hopefully in 2028