The last four decades have witnessed a fundamental transformation in the types of men, and now women, who exercise the broad and untrammeled judicial power of the U.S. Supreme Court. Not so long ago it was common practice for judicially inexperienced national politicians to be placed at the pinnacle of judicial power.

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However, for more than a generation now, a new pattern, embraced by presidents as different as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, has instead filled the U.S. Supreme Court with jurists whose career experiences have occurred predominantly in the quiet chambers of appeals courts rather than in the halls of Congress or the White House cabinet room. This change has drawn little public comment or debate, even as its consequences have indisputably accumulated.

A United States in which the Supreme Court only rarely defers to the president or Congress may be a country in which individual rights and freedom from unfair government conduct are indeed well protected, but it may also represent a redistribution of political power that has occurred by quiet accretion rather than robust debate or explicit decision. Most Americans, if they understand and ponder the changes the U.S. Supreme Court has undergone in their lifetimes, may choose to endorse rather than object to those changes, but the transformation is one that should be appreciated rather than ignored.

This article was written by David J. Garrow and originally published in the February 2005 issue of American History Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to American History magazine today!

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