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After the Supreme Court refused on Monday to let him disrupt mail-in voting, President Donald Trump denounced his own appointees and said the court’s recent rulings are so “shockingly bad” that “it won’t be easily possible for our Country to recover.” But if anything threatens the country’s recovery, it is the court’s other rulings, the ones that place the president above enacted law.

The court has insulated the president from criminal laws designed to prevent corruption and election interference. It has let him disregard votes by Congress that prohibit him from starting illegal wars abroad. And it has said he can fire the watchdogs Congress installed to check him—replacing independent agency leaders with bootlickers.

Yet because of decisions like the mail-ballot ruling, the court is often cast as the last line of defense between the presidency and autocracy.

Such a view misunderstands what the court is up to in those rare instances when it has stood up to the president. In each of those cases, what we have witnessed is the court enforcing federal statutes. A judicial duty explicit in the Constitution, the enforcement of federal statutes is foundational to a nation where every individual, including the president, is subject to the rule of law.

But alongside this important judicial role, the court has claimed a second, and more troubling function: a power to defy enacted federal law. Since the 1850s, the court has claimed that it may dissolve any statute Congress enacts whenever five justices dislike Congress’ constitutional judgment. The result has been an imperial presidency—along with a court that claims the exclusive power to police or condone the president’s excesses.

To save our democracy from this unsustainable situation, the next Congress must replace judicial supremacy with a court accountable to federal law. A court required to enforce federal statutes would still strike down executive actions that violate the Constitution—indeed, a federal statute instructs judges to do precisely that. What the court........

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