The Cato Supreme Court Review is a publication of the Cato Institute. On The Bob Zadek Show it is identified through its editors-in-chief: Ilya Shapiro, who held the position at the time of his 2016 and 2017 appearances, and Trevor Burrus, identified by the same title in 2021. The excerpts describe the Review chiefly through the constitutional questions its editors discuss on air rather than through its own contents.
Ilya Shapiro and the Review’s editor-in-chief role
Bob Zadek introduced Ilya Shapiro to listeners as a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief at the Cato Supreme Court Review, noting that Shapiro had written many books and testified often before Congress Ilya Shapiro on the Supreme Court in the Balance (2016). When Shapiro returned to the show in March 2017, Zadek repeated the description, adding that Shapiro was a Senior Fellow of Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute and, importantly, the Editor-in-Chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review, and that he had co-authored Religious Liberties for Corporations: Hobby Lobby, the Affordable Care Act, and the Constitution in 2014 Judge Gorsuch on the Hot Seat (2017). Zadek also noted that Shapiro had last appeared on the show in May of 2016.
The Review thus enters the program as a credential — a marker of its editor’s standing in constitutional debate — rather than as a subject discussed on its own terms. Neither excerpt describes the Review’s contents, its publication schedule, its founding, or its editorial process.
Judicial deference and the 2016 vacancy
In the May 2016 episode, Shapiro’s discussion of the Supreme Court turned on judicial deference. Zadek raised Chief Justice John Roberts’s statement in NFIB v. Sebelius that it is not his job to rethink legislation, characterizing it as an expression of profound judicial deference even though Roberts had his own doubts about whether the statute was constitutional Ilya Shapiro on the Supreme Court in the Balance (2016). Zadek then turned to Judge Garland’s pending nomination, describing Garland as a compromise nominee who had demonstrated profound judicial deference, and asking whether Garland does not prefer an activist approach.
Shapiro agreed that Garland does not go out of his way to make a name for himself and is not writing big, bold, kind of radical opinions, but that he does defer to the government as much as possible — whether the Environmental Protection Agency, law enforcement, or the National Labor Relations Board. Shapiro added that Garland being a so-called moderate might be worse than a so-called progressive radical who at least maybe on criminal justice issues or others where it is the left and the right against the pragmatic middle. He said it looked like Garland would not get a hearing or a vote until after the election, and that Republicans were justified in taking that position because the direction of the court was in balance with the vacancy.
Zadek closed the segment by thanking Shapiro for a half hour of his time and repeating his identification as a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief at the Cato Supreme Court Review.
The Review and the stakes of appointment
Shapiro’s return in March 2017 came amid the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, nominated by Donald Trump. Zadek described the Senate’s treatment of Gorsuch as Kabuki theater of make-believe interview and a show trial of sorts, and said the Senate would now do its procedural things, hopefully leading to confirmation Judge Gorsuch on the Hot Seat (2017).
Asked why the appointment of a Supreme Court Justice is so important, Shapiro said the Supreme Court plays an increasingly large role in our political discourse, and that every important political issue the country faces has come before the Court — healthcare, immigration, voting rights, gun rights, gay rights, campaign finance, affirmative action, abortion. He called that anomalous, noting that this term at the Supreme Court did not have those kinds of blockbusters and that this was a regression towards the mean. Shapiro said that as the federal government insinuates itself into more and more aspects of our lives, at the end of the day the buck stops with the Supreme Court — not because the justices are all-knowing Platonic guardians, but because in our system of government, as one of the former justices said about half a century ago, “We’re not final because we’re infallible; we’re infallible because we’re final.” He said the nomination was important because which president and which party got to make the appointment would change the dynamic of the court and the direction it would go on the big issues that tend to be decided five to four.
Trevor Burrus and the Review in 2021
By March 2021 the Review’s editor-in-chief was Trevor Burrus. Zadek introduced him as a research fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor-in-chief — yes, the man at the top — of the Cato Supreme Court Review Escaping the Statrix: Trevor Burrus’s Rent Control Red Pill (2021). Zadek said Burrus had studied rent control in the courts and economically for quite some time.
The episode’s subject was rent control, which Zadek described as one of the more obnoxious economic inventions of the progressive era and as contrary to the private ownership and enjoyment of one’s property and to the constitutional prohibition on government taking property without just compensation. Zadek said rent control crashes into those core values, and that occasionally hope arises because a rent control case finds its way into the judicial system and freedom-loving people who respect private property rights hope the Supreme Court will undo the damage of rent control. The episode’s listed topics include the Takings Clause, property rights, public choice theory, and Kelo v. City of New London.
Burrus’s own words in the excerpt are limited to his greeting to Zadek; the substantive discussion of rent control in the excerpt is carried by Zadek’s framing.
Across episodes: the Review as a recurring credential
The Cato Supreme Court Review appears in three episodes across five years, and in each it functions the same way: as part of the introduction establishing the guest’s authority on constitutional questions. Ilya Shapiro carries the title in 2016 and 2017, when the topics are the Garland vacancy and the Gorsuch nomination; Trevor Burrus carries it in 2021, when the topic is rent control and the Takings Clause. The excerpts show no development in how the Review itself is described — no change in its role, its treatment, or the terms used for it — only a change in who holds the editor-in-chief position between the earlier and later episodes.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state when the Cato Supreme Court Review was founded, how often it appears, what it contains, or who publishes or funds it beyond its association with the Cato Institute. They do not describe any article, volume, or issue of the Review, nor any editorial position it has taken. Nothing in the excerpts indicates what NFIB v. Sebelius held, which amendment the Takings Clause belongs to, or the outcome of Kelo v. City of New London; those matters are named but not explained. The excerpts also do not say whether Shapiro or Burrus continued in the editor-in-chief role after the episodes in which they appear.