A pair of death penalty decisions reaffirms a sad fact about the high court: There is a majority of justices who want to keep the executions coming.

The Roberts court is taking up cases with phantasmal litigants and speculative complaints. But how it resolves them could have a massive impact on American life.

Long before the 6–3 court hands down rulings, the cases it chooses to hear have a tidal effect on the nation’s ideological drift.

The chief justice’s veiled end-of-year remarks seem to indicate that if the high court cannot reform itself, reform will be forced upon it.