this was a year that was split into before and after—the dividing line being when the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade. Following the shocking leak of the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, on May 2nd, we fully entered the era of conservative dominance, with aggressive rulings on abortion, guns, and religion. Doubts about the Court’s legitimacy reached a fever pitch, and its unpopularity hit alarming lows. Soul-searching about the Court and the rule of law has rarely been as cynical or as fundamental. Law professors asked one another, “What do we say to students now?,” with many questioning the distinction between law and politics, or even the Court’s final authority to interpret the Constitution—which the Court first claimed for itself about two hundred years ago. The Justices appeared to understand that they are presiding over a historic decline in public trust, as several of them have made public remarks insisting on the importance of the Court’s retaining its legitimacy. “Everybody in this country is free to disagree with our decisions,” Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the Dobbs majority opinion, said. But he warned that someone “crosses an important line when they say that the Court is acting in a way that is illegitimate.”