In September 2021, Balls & Strikes debuted based on a simple premise: that by continuing to propagate the myth of a magically apolitical judiciary in this era of a six-justice conservative supermajority, the legal press corps was failing readers in spectacular fashion. In an editor’s note, I wrote that Balls & Strikes would be different—that its coverage would center the Supreme Court’s impact on the millions of people who are not constitutional law professors, and reject the assumption that an outcome is just and correct simply because a Federalist Society drone in a robe explains that The Law Has Always Compelled It.
Five years and 1,048 blog posts later, I concede that there are problems we have yet to solve. The liberal Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, for example, is still heaping praise on Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose exercises of real-world power he considers less important than the fact that she was nice to him when they clerked at the Supreme Court three decades ago. In a fragile and rapidly evolving media landscape, prestige outlets are regrettably susceptible to capture by conservative pundits whose job is to persuade you that the most reactionary Court in living memory is actually nothing to worry about. And no matter how many times the Court demonstrates the concept’s foolishness, there will always be another byline-hungry law professor who is willing to unironically use the phrase “3-3-3 Court” in public.
At the same time, there are reasons to be optimistic. Balls & Strikes’s steady growth has made it far and away the internet’s most-read media outlet that takes its name from a sitting justice’s stupid baseball analogy. Broadly speaking, more commentators are more willing to talk about Supreme Court justices as the political actors they are, instead of the constitutional oracles that beat writers of a certain age imagine them to be. Perhaps the most encouraging sign is the Court’s record-low approval rating, which currently sits at 33 percent. What this suggests to me is that normal people understand exactly what the Court is doing, even if newspaper columnists who really want to be invited to its annual holiday party have yet to catch up.
Monday marks the start of another Supreme Court term, and as usual, Balls & Strikes will provide full coverage of the new crop of cases that Clarence Thomas hopes to use to take away more of your civil rights between now and the end of June. Starting this fall, however, we are also offering readers the option to support our work by subscribing to Balls & Strikes on a monthly or annual basis. If you are so inclined, you can view pricing and sign up here.
Since its launch, Balls & Strikes has been free to read for everyone thanks to the support of Demand Justice, of which Balls & Strikes is an editorially independent project. Your subscription dollars will be processed through Demand Justice and go directly into Balls & Strikes’s operating budget, which will help us do things like pay our great columnists, hire more freelancers, and develop cool new features for the site.
As you might guess, throwing up a robust, unyielding paywall would not be a useful or prudent strategy for a nonprofit outlet like Balls & Strikes, so rest assured that new content published on the site will still be unlocked and available to everyone. Subscribers will get access to our full archives, though, along with the satisfaction of knowing that they are doing their part to make legal journalism a little better, or at the very least, marginally less bad.
As always, you can find everything we publish at ballsandstrikes.org, or follow us on Bluesky at @ballsandstrikes.org. You can get in touch by emailing us at contact@ballsandstrikes.org. Thanks for reading.
This Week In Balls & Strikes
Tierra Walker’s Death Was Preventable. The Conservative Legal Movement Made It Predictable, Madiba Dennie
Republican politicians have made Texas doctors increasingly afraid to provide lifesaving abortion care.
Trump’s White House Press Ban Is Not Even Close to Legal, G.S. Hans
The president’s lawyers once again struggle with basic constitutional law principles that a bright 1L would have little trouble explaining.
The Trump White House Keeps Treating the First Amendment as More of a Suggestion, Madiba Dennie
Where normal people see “rights,” the White House sees privileges that the president may grant or withhold as he sees fit.
The Conservative Takeover of SCOTUSblog Is Just What the Supreme Court Needed, Jay Willis
SCOTUSblog used to cover the Supreme Court. Now, it cheers for it.
Ketanji Brown Jackson Is Getting Tired of the Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket Abuses, Madiba Dennie
The conservative supermajority keeps refusing to take the real-world harms of its work seriously.
This Week In Other Stuff We Appreciated
After SCOTUS Allowed Tennessee Execution to Go Ahead, Tennessee Botched the Execution, Chris Geidner, Law Dork
“Harm is a feeling that Republican officials are not allowed to suffer, not bodily harm suffered by others.”
Why Does Trump Think He Can Act Like a King?, Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times
“Crediting this court for checking the president’s excesses is a bit like hailing the guard who caught the thief after leaving the store unlocked.”
This Week In Obscure Photos of Supreme Court Justices On Getty Images
“Balls & Strikes’s steady growth has made it far and away the internet’s most-read media outlet that takes its name from a sitting justice’s stupid baseball analogy.” 😆 I should comment with something witty, but really I just want to say that this made me laugh. You all are doing great!
Loved your appearance on Amicus. Have not pledged yet because I wanted to read first and also see if there’s a way to listen and not just read but if I continue to read I’ll pledge! Thanks for your great work!