Third, this is likely the best method Roberts has of pushing the court in the face-saving direction he actually wants it to go, where it gradually but significantly moves the constitutional law to the right, only without overturning the entire apple cart all at once. If Roberts is replaced by a fourth progressive jurist, Justices Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett might feel some pressure to pivot to finding any sort of middle ground on major issues with tactically moderate progressives, such as Elena Kagan. After all, they will be on the court a long time and they have to know that 73-year-old Clarence Thomas and 71-year-old Samuel Alito can’t live forever. If Kavanaugh and Barrett find that there’s a potential for the balance of the court to shift in the next ten years, they might be persuaded to play a little nicer with Kagan, lest the court possibly swing drastically leftward when Thomas and Alito are no longer on the job.

This is all a long shot, I will say, but it’s more likely to work than whatever it is Roberts is doing now to convince his junior colleagues not to join Thomas and Alito in a mission to watch the world burn. Tactically speaking, the ballast of a fourth progressive justice will do a lot more to pull the court back from the brink of total illegitimacy than any admonishing minority opinions Roberts might join his three progressive colleagues in offering.

Finally, the one thing that Roberts appears truly concerned with other than the court’s legitimacy (and demolishing voting rights, which he’s already achieved), is his own legacy. How will history judge him if he retires early to restore the court’s balance and legitimacy? One thing is sure, he will go down in certain conservative circles as a Benedict Arnold–level villain. But he’s already achieved that status to a great extent and I don’t think Donald Trump could be any meaner to him than he already has been. Meanwhile, should he retire, Roberts will almost certainly go down in history as a noble hero who sacrificed his own position to save the legitimacy of the court and maybe even the “constitutional system.”