Supreme Court Whisperer Wins Without Staff, Office, Or JD

Edward Blum, a former stockbroker who transformed from a dyed-in-the-wool liberal to a conservative activist in the 1980s, has no office, staff, or law degree, but has become one of the most successful Supreme Court strategists of the new century. Blum is the man behind the case that led the Supreme Court to overturn portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and is the architect of two cases before the Court now, concerning voting districts and affirmative action. When asked about how he establishes his cases, Blum said, “I did it all on Google.” Blum avoids Washington, D.C., has no staff, and has no law degree—though as part of his vacation in Florida he said he sat in on constitutional law and American legal history classes at Florida State University. But he has cannily crafted original arguments that have a stunning success rate in making it before the Supreme Court—a body that rejects about 99 percent of the more than 8,000 cases appealed to it annually.