Hello, and welcome positively dreadful with me, your host, Brian Boiler.

If you socialize in liberal circles or progressive circles with people who are politically active

on the center left, you've probably noticed this in the past few years. Fourth of July rolls round

and you spend your Independence Day holiday grousing about whichever rights or benefits the Supreme

Court's conservative majority has just curtailed or eliminated. Last year it was the right to abortion,

this year the right of sexual minorities to be called into the law. The Court also effectively

abolished affirmative action and we could recite a litany of decisions over many years to illustrate

that it's on a kind of ideological rampage. I also think that case by case we could stress test

the logic of some of its six three or five four opinions and the open-minded people would agree

that in many instances the Republican appointed justices are exercising power, sometimes even

partisan power rather than pure judgment. But I don't think that would be very productive.

At the end of the day a Supreme Court opinion is kind of like a hot take that has the force of law.

It isn't really falsifiable and the question of whether it's well-reasoned or faithful to the law

and constitution and precedent is fairly subjective. What's beyond dispute I think isn't the merits of

any particular decision but that many of them are deeply out of step with the will of the public

today and imposed by a court that was constituted without the consent of the public. And that raises

an obvious question. What if anything should be done about it? Naturally opinions on that question

differ. The Court's architects think everything is wonderful and will claim that simple reporting

about the justices or any criticism of them represents some kind of subversive attack.

But even good faith interlocutors can't agree on an answer.

Some influential liberals like Joe Biden think the answer is for now at least to do nothing.

Others think the answer is to pass a law expanding the number of seats on the Supreme Court

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