As families gather this year for our annual holiday feast, there remain many things for all of us to give pause and thanks for in our lives. Our friends, family, and faith remain central to this holiday. So is our freedom. Despite economic, political, and social problems, we remain a free and prosperous nation committed to core values of individual rights and self-determination. Indeed, more than any year, there is particular reason to give thanks to the most besieged and resilient part of our constitutional system: the courts. Despite attacks from the left and right, our court system remains a bulwark against political impulse and excess. The Supreme Court in particular has faced unrelenting attacks ranging from a reprehensible leak to an attempted assassination of a justice to calls for court packing. It has stood its ground just as James Madison and other Framers had hoped in their original design of our constitutional system.
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