FRESH AIR: A new book examines the conservative direction the Supreme Court has headed in over the past 50 years, ever since Nixon became president. The author, my guest Adam Cohen, writes, for five decades, the court has, with striking regularity, sided with the rich and powerful against the poor and weak in virtually every area of the law. He says, in campaign finance law, the court has opened the floodgates to money from wealthy individuals and corporations. In election law, it’s upheld rules and practices that make it more difficult for the poor and racial minorities to vote. In criminal law, it’s favored prosecutors so consistently that it’s contributed significantly to the nation’s mass incarceration crisis. And on a wide variety of issues, the court has ruled against the poor. Cohen’s new book is called “Supreme Inequality.” His previous book, “Imbeciles,” was about the 1927 Supreme Court decision bound up in the eugenics movement that upheld a state’s right to sterilize people deemed unfit to procreate because they were, quote, “mentally deficient.” Adam Cohen is a former public interest lawyer who worked with the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center. He served as a member of The New York Times editorial board and as senior writer for Time magazine. MORE