Showtime's four-part Supreme Court docuseries, Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court, will premiere its first episode on September 22, amid a period of intense concern about the impact and integrity of the high court.
From director Dawn Porter, the project delves into the court's modern era, reaching back to Earl Warren's court of the 1950s and '60s, when the justices established a series of landmark progressive precedents, to the present day, with the conservative majority tearing down the right to abortion. and affirmative action. With it has come growing distrust of the court itself, as well as internal intrigue given last year's unprecedented leak of the Dobbs abortion decision.
"I wanted people to understand how the court works," Porter told Deadline. “…You don't pay attention until something you love is gone, until a right you hold dear has been revoked. So I felt like it would be good to contribute to this conversation. News is important, but it reports on cases, but not necessarily on the long road to this Supreme Court and how we got here. And I wanted to focus on how we got here, not just where we are.”
Porter approached the judges to comment on the series but, to no one's surprise, they did not participate. “The closest we could get were some employees. Secretaries strictly adhere to ethical standards and will not discuss individual deliberations. They are obliged to keep secret. And I feel that many of the clerks take their ethical obligations perhaps more seriously than some of the judges. But they would tell you anything that was published. “We could report on anything that is in the court documents.”
Some of the recent stories that have raised ethical concerns about judges, including Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor, were published after the documentary series wrapped.
But Porter said that "whether something inappropriate is happening or not, appearances matter, and they matter because, ultimately, what we're talking about now is the American public's confidence in the court, and that's at an all-time low." all time, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to do this series now is that people... are starting to question the validity of decisions. And if we lose that, we're literally losing the rule of law. "That's what America is founded on. That's where we are today. That's how serious it is."
Porter said the leak of the Dobbs decision last year was the most significant in the court's history.
“Not only is it significant that the decision itself has been leaked, but it is significant the impact it has clearly had on the court,” he said. “Judges should get along. Those nine people work together for life. And when you see the distrust they have now, it damages the way the court functions and behaves. So I think we will see the impacts of that leak for a long time.”
The project was produced for Showtime by Trilogy Films. Porter also executive produces alongside Eli Holzman, Vinnie Malhotra and Aaron Saidman. Porter's last film, The Lady Bird Diaries, about Lady Bird Johnson, won the Lone Star Award at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival. She won an Emmy for Un(re)solved, about unsolved cases from the rights era civilians. His other films include 37 Words, The Me You Ca n't See, The Way I See It, John Lewis: Good Trouble and Gideon's Army.
Watch Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court 2023 Tv Series Trailer
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