What does the left think the Supreme Court is?

To acknowledge the Court’s legitimacy and to correctly understand its purpose is, naturally, not to endorse all of its decisions. Like most people, I consider it to have erred in a substantial number of cases — occasionally catastrophically. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that its “mistakes” are typically the result of judicial philosophies that are at odds with my own, and not of the Court’s members allowing their personal animosities towards litigants to inform their adjudications. Setting up our discussions on these terms is a prerequisite to understanding and to civic comity.

This, of course, is precisely why critics have sidestepped the issue. Conflating ends and means, as politicians throughout history have discovered, is a surefire way to confuse the electorate and to create viable enemies on whom losses can be blamed. Watching the wailing and gnashing of teeth that followed the Court’s ruling in Hobby Lobby’s favor, it became quickly clear why this approach holds such appeal. Keenly aware that they cannot confess aloud that they consider the American Constitution to be little more than an irritation, the more excitable champions of the state have of late taken a more subtle form: First, they promise fealty to the charter and to any supporting laws; second, they presume in word and in deed that there is no important difference between the document’s meaning and the current thinking of the ruling classes; and, when they inevitably lose a big case, they seek to discuss anything but the issue at hand.

Yesterday’s decision was of extraordinary import to those few Americans whose most precious beliefs are being prodded at by a Leviathan that does not know when to barge in unannounced, when to politely knock, and when to leave well alone. But of infinitely broader consequence was the casual manner in which the rule of law was relegated to an irrelevance in the widespread reaction to the ruling. Laws that can be held to mean anything will end up meaning nothing; laws that mean nothing are of no use at all. And those who sit indifferently in the middle, hoping to extract quick wins from a system that they abhor, will soon bring the walls tumbling down — not just on their antagonists, but on themselves, too.