The New Authoritarians: How Professors Are Now Calling for Biden to Simply Defy the Supreme Court

The Framers saw the Supreme Court as playing a counter-majoritarian role when it is necessary to protect individual rights and constitutional norms. The alternative is what the Framers viewed as a tyranny of the majority, where popularity rather than principle prevails. For that reason, the Court has often stood with the least popular in our society and, since Marbury v. Madison, has had the final word on what the Constitution means.

Justice Robert Jackson once observed that he and his colleagues “are not final because we are infallible, we are infallible because we are final.”