The end of a Supreme Court term always sparks a lively conversation about how to characterize what just happened, and this year was no exception.
In refusing to weaken the Voting Rights Act any further, did the court show itself to be a bit less dogmatically conservative than the year before?
Did the 6-to-3 rejection of a dangerous theory that would have stripped state courts of the authority to review election laws show that the justices could still build bridges across their ideological divide?
Yes, democracy survived, and that’s a good thing. But to settle on that theme is to miss the point of a term that was in many respects the capstone of the 18-year tenure of Chief Justice John Roberts.