The Court has undergone some major changes since the Casey decision, and great hopes are vested in the addition of justices who understand that the judiciary is not to displace the legislature in determining the great questions of how a democratic society is to deliberate and decide the right ordering of our life together.
But the balance on the Court could hardly be more fragile. It ought not to be the case that, as is cynically said in law schools, all you need to know about constitutional law is how to count to five. In the unhappy circumstance of our culture wars, the proper goal is not to get the Court on one side or the other. The goal is for the Court to observe the self-denying ordinance of the Constitution and let the people, acting through their elected representatives, decide.
Senator Obama could hardly be more explicit in his hostility to that goal. Which is why Wednesday’s debate, for the first time in this campaign, made luminously clear the single most important question at stake in this election.
— Richard John Neuhaus, First Things
