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The justices’ role is that of constitutional referee, not partisan policymaker.
I attended a charming Fourth of July parade this past weekend. It started in Live-Free-Or-Die New Hampshire and then crossed into Vermont, home of America’s most beloved socialist, Sen. Bernie Sanders. It was a good reminder of how our political differences don’t seem so drastic when you step away from your screens.
Our country’s 250th birthday is also a good time to appreciate the wisdom of our Founders. Other revolutionary governments have come and gone, but ours still stands. That’s partly due to its sturdy design, which carefully divides power between the legislative and executive branches and empowers a Supreme Court to referee disputes.
The Supreme Court has a lot of critics, however, and they didn’t take the weekend off. The court released a flurry of decisions before beginning its summer recess on July 1. Those left partisans on both sides steaming. MAGA stalwarts were outraged that the court struck down President Trump’s executive order curtailing birthright citizenship, overruled a White House campaign to tighten mail-in ballot rules, and blocked the president’s effort to fire Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook. Earlier this year, the court swatted down the president’s sweeping tariff regime in a decision the Journal called “a stinging repudiation of a signature White House initiative.”
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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James B. Meigs is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a City Journal contributing editor.