Jan Baran sits down with Sarah Isgur, author of the New York Times bestseller Last Branch Standing, for a wide-ranging conversation about law, campaigns, and the Supreme Court. Sarah draws on her experience in opposition research, Election Day legal operations for Romney 2012, and her role as deputy campaign manager of the Carly Fiorina campaign to explore what it really means to be a lawyer in politics. She makes the case that a good campaign lawyer’s job isn’t to say no. It’s to find a compliant path to yes.
The conversation then turns to Sarah’s book and the Supreme Court narratives she argues are simply wrong. She dismantles the “6-3 partisan court” myth with data, that only 15% of last term’s cases broke along strict ideological lines and makes the provocative case that the current U.S. President has had the worst record of any president at the Supreme Court in modern history. She also argues that Congress, not the justices, deserves most of the blame for high-profile legal flashpoints, since the majority of landmark SCOTUS decisions are really just questions of statutory interpretation that Congress could fix with new legislation. She closes on a note of cautious optimism, introducing her “Ted Lasso vs. House of Cards” framework for why positive, good-faith candidates may be starting to gain ground over the politics of outrage.
About Sarah Isgur
Sarah Isgur is the editor of SCOTUSblog, host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions, and an ABC News contributor. Isgur has previously worked on multiple presidential campaigns and in all three branches of the federal government. During the first Trump administration, she served in the Department of Justice as the director of the Office of Public Affairs and senior counsel to the deputy attorney general during the Russia investigation. She clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Northwestern University. She is the author of the NYT bestselling book, Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today’s Supreme Court.
