Noah Feldman, Columnist

The Dark Side of All Those 'Friends' at the Supreme Court

The "amicus machine" lets clerks make constitutional law. That should be the justices' job.

March 9, 2016 at 2:11 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Friendly confines.
Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

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Filing a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court sounds like an act of spontaneous intellectual generosity meant to help the justices see all sides of a case. Or maybe an exercise in lobbying by interest groups.

Actually, it's neither. A new article by two law professors shows that an organized business they dub the “amicus machine” generates hundreds of amicus curiae briefs, planned and coordinated by the specialized guild of lawyers who argue before the court.