In my view, Jennifer Rubin is the most astute opinion writer among many excellent ones whose columns appear in The Washington Post and The New York Times. Yesterday, the Post published one of Rubin’s finest and most important essays relating to the state of the nation. It was headed “Self-government is worth defending.” What needs defending to preserve our country’s self-government is a sad one to think about on Independence Day: the Supreme Court’s “disintegration as a legislative body” and “its emergence as a supreme right-wing policy maker.” Rubin backs up her assertion with incontrovertible examples of rulings, statements, and conduct on the part of the right-wing justices who control the Court.

A court controlled by justices who have shown contempt for the law and standards of ethical conduct in the face of their duty to uphold the law and to conduct themselves ethically is not going to reform itself. That task must be undertaken by the voters, Congress, and the President. The instruments of reform available to them under the Constitution are imposition of term limits, altering the scope of the court’s jurisdiction, increasing the number of justices, and ethics reform. Progress in this respect is unlikely unless the Democrats achieve sweeping victories in next year’s elections.