Yet the question remains: Will a Court now dominated by jurists reared in an intellectual culture that passionately rejects the entire approach to constitutional reasoning that made it possible for abortion rights to be asserted in the first place allow other, supposedly equally mistaken precedents to remain standing? I really can’t see it.

Now that doesn’t mean other earthquakes will take place right away. It could be that Roberts, who tends to favor restraint somewhat more consistently than his colleagues, will succeed in persuading his fellow conservatives to act with somewhat greater circumspection for a while. It could also be that it takes some time for the right lawsuit or state law to make its way through the courts. (Privacy, contraception, sodomy, and same-sex marriage are pretty widely accepted and even positively affirmed these days, leaving it an uncertainty just where or when such a challenge might arise.)

But that’s different than saying the other five conservatives on the Court are following a limiting principle to keep them from knocking down precedents they’ve been reared for decades to consider profoundly flawed, and even pernicious.

I, for one, see no evidence those justices are guided by any such principle. If that’s correct, it means there are likely to be more earthquakes in our future—at least so long as the right maintains control of the Court.