The North Carolina gerrymandering decision made that scandal impossible to ignore: What else but rank partisan allegiance could account for such an abrupt switch on a question that determined political power in the state? In other words, the vote for Supreme Court justices may have been the most important of the year, and it was a black box to most voters. Like it or not, the courts are another political branch, most of all when they decide basic constitutional questions, such as whether freedom and equality forbid extreme gerrymandering. On April 4, Judge Janet Protasiewicz won a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court and switched the court’s ideological balance, by openly emphasizing her support for reproductive rights and broadly liberal commitments. Deep political conflicts over constitutional vision have always existed in American law, particularly when courts are called upon to judge what a fair election system looks like.

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