How to make the Supreme Court fear being overturned

In a few weeks, the Supreme Court will end its term, leaving behind a trail of legal wreckage that has become all too familiar since the emergence of its conservative supermajority in 2020.

Although the headlines will focus on the specific casualties — most notably a crushing blow to the Voting Rights Act — the real story of this term is not what the court did, but why it felt so comfortable doing it.

We are witnessing the solidification of a sovereign court: an institution that has effectively decoupled itself from the traditional gravity of American checks and balances.

For decades, the court operated under a healthy, if unspoken, anxiety: the fear of reversal. This fear once acted as a structural brake, reminding the justices that if they strayed too far from the constitutional mainstream, the system would push back.

For instance, the 11th, 13th, 14th, 16th and 26th Amendments to the Constitution were passed to overturn Supreme Court decisions. Congress has reversed several decisions by passing statutes as well, as exemplified in the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009. And the Supreme Court occasionally overrules itself, including overturning Bowers v. Hardwick, which allowed states to criminalize same-sex sexual relations, in 2003.

But in our era........

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