One of many recent turning points in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court is something that did not happen a little more than a decade ago. Then-80-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a legal titan with a history of fighting (and defeating) cancer, chose not to retire with a Democratic president in office and a Democratic Senate in place that could have confirmed a suitable successor. When she lost her final battle with cancer in 2020, Donald Trump and a Republican Senate raced to confirm Amy Coney Barrett, consolidating a conservative majority on the Court that remains in place today. Now, the dominant figure in the Court’s conservative bloc, Justice Samuel Alito, faces a moment of decision similar to Ginsburg’s.

At 76, Alito has already made his mark on constitutional law forever. The opinion he wrote in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, slaying the great white whale of Roe v. Wade, has eternally made him a hero to judicial conservatives, anti-abortion activists, and members of the Christian right. He has also contributed vitally to the judicial destruction of the Voting Rights Act, to a radically expanded doctrine of religious liberty that does violence to church-state separation, and, most recently, to making life easier for Trump. Just as Democrats lost the Senate in 2014 before losing the White House in 2016, Republicans are in serious........

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