[W]e have imparted far too much importance to the Supreme Court. Its status as ultimate arbiter over what the Constitution allows and doesn’t allow gives the nine unelected lifetime appointees an undue amount of power that always strikes those out of power as unseemly and those in power as obviously just—infallible, in fact. In so doing, the Court has fundamentally short-circuited the democratic process by removing too many issues from the public debate altogether and turned every presidential election into a proxy battle over who will dominate two full branches of government rather than one.

And those are the only two branches that really matter anymore, given congressional deadlock. Senate rules combined with House districts designed to make seats safe for one party or the other thus ensuring polarizing primaries have rendered Congress sclerotic. The Supreme Court acts as a sort of superlegislature now, its pronouncements expected to be treated as the word of God in our fractured political landscape.

As such, it makes perfect sense that devotees of the Glorious ACB pray at the Temple of Justice next to the mourners of the Notorious RBG, pop icon. This isn’t a political struggle so much as a religious one, a fight over who gets to control the true church of the state.

And religious quarrels are never settled cleanly.