The Left-Wing Assault on the Supreme Court

Activists have concluded that since they lack ideological control over the Court, it must be delegitimized.

From the New Deal to well past the Reagan era, progressives serenely regarded the United States Supreme Court, and thus the third branch of government overall, as being securely in their hands. The pieties they mouthed during this period — about the sacredness of Marbury v. Madison and the importance of judicial independence to a vital republic — had the distinct virtue of being true.

But this language was equally a means to a rhetorical end during...