The more I speak with people both in the political world and in what I’ve called the legal academic-judicial nexus, the more I see just what a sea change is underway about Court reform. It’s come in successive waves: Dobbs, the immunity decision, Callais. There are various models of reform. But I don’t know anyone who has seriously considered the matter who thinks that you can have serious reform without expanding the Court. In these conversations, a few people have raised the question: what if the Court rules that a Court expansion law is itself unconstitutional? To put it slightly differently, what if the Court decides that the limits on its authority the Constitution creates, the paths for accountability it creates, are themselves unconstitutional.

This is question that is once absurd but also in a certain specific way important to prepare for.