Supreme Court ‘Legitimacy Watch’ | National Review

Today’s entry is from the New Yorker.

Jeannie Suk Gersen argues that the Dobbs case is an “open challenge to the Court’s authority.” That is true, in a sense: The people who arguing that Roe should be vacated are arguing that the Court had no authority to make the decision, which it didn’t: Roe is not based in law or in the text of the Constitution, being, as it is, a purely political imposition and an abuse of power.

But unlike, say, the left-wing activists who rioted in the wake of the Kyle Rittenhouse case, conservatives have asked the Supreme Court to reverse itself; this isn’t a revolutionary rejection of the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, but a 50-year effort to persuade the Court to undo the damage it has done. Which is to say, it is conservatives who have accepted the Supreme Court’s legitimacy even when they haven’t got their way, while it is the Left and the Democrats — the New Yorker, et al. — who insist that the Court will forfeit its legitimacy if they do not get their way.

There are plenty — too many — would-be revolutionist knuckleheads on the right. But the people who are arguing in front of the Supreme Court, asking it to perform its constitutional duty, are the opposite of that.