Government’s least-understood “Third Branch”  has a huge impact on our lives—from abortion to affirmative action, education to the environment, privacy to police action. But in recent years the way we select Supreme Court justices has become dangerously politicized, threatening judicial impartiality, and making it increasingly hard to have faith in the ideal chiseled on its facade: “Equal Justice Under Law”.

Advise & Dissent goes behind the lines and into the trenches of the judicial confirmation wars. The film tracks two opposing lobbyists and two lions of the Senate through several recent nominations, each of which inflames passions and provokes surprising conflicts and shifting alliances.  A similar scenario is about to unfold with President Obama’s nomination of a successor to Justice Antonin Scalia.

The award-winning film weaves “you-are-there” scenes into an unexpectedly suspenseful narrative. Advise & Dissent reveals how honesty has succumbed to strategy, how politics have come to trump principle, and how partisanship is overwhelming judicial independence.