The Constitution and the Supreme Court

There’s an old saying: “The Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is.” An authoritative column yesterday by New York Times Supreme Court analyst Linda Greenhouse yesterday discusses the ways in which the present Court, stacked by Republicans with a super majority of right-wing extremists, is in effect saying that the Constitution means what suits the personal preferences of the majority of justices. The words of the Constitution remain unchanged, but their meaning, as lower courts must take them to be in the future, is changing, among other ways, in curtailing women’s reproductive freedom, forcing states to fund religious education, and reprehensibly limiting gun safety regulation.