The question of whether judges are “policymakers” is at the heart of a U.S. Supreme Court case considered critical to Delaware courts’ “politically balanced” structure, as well as their national reputation as an objective forum for business disputes.

The federal appellate courts are divided on the question, which also has as a backdrop in a similar ongoing political debate over whether to restructure the Supreme Court and whether as Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. has proclaimed: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.”