The Supremes

Here's a thought on the Supremes, not the ones who sang "Stop! In the Name of Love" but the ones who form our highest court. Most Americans seem to think that the Court has the final say on what is constitutional. That belief springs from civics classes taught in high schools. 

The Founding Fathers, in the belief that power corrupts, divided  the power to govern among the President, the Senate, the House and the Supreme Court. In effect they set up a permanent but shifting four-way tug-of-war. All four entities keep trying to gather more power, and all four interpret the Constitution. When the Affordable Care Act was passed by the House and Senate and signed by the President, all three were claiming that the act was constitutional. Millions of people gained health insurance. By the time the act reached the Supreme Court, the justices had only one workable choice, which was to go along no matter what they might believe. Events had put the interpretations of the other branches of the government in charge. To rule against the ACA might have crashed the country and its economy, and that would have destroyed the Court. First, the Court protects itself. Something similar happened in the Court's vindication of gay marriage. A situation where a same-sex couple was married in the city but not in the desert was ultimately unsupportable. It was nuts. The nation couldn't work that way. The Court had to make marriage rights legally universal. 

Decisions of 6-3 and 5-4 are carefully put together to give the loonier justices a chance to posture in front of their political friends. My guess is that only three justices are genuinely enslaved by weird metaphysical passions. Look at the most radical-right court we've seen in 80 years, and then look at how many times they've carefully carved off chunks of their own noses. They had no reasonable choice.