Unfortunately, Robert Bork's op-ed in today's The Wall Street Journal is for subscribers only. But it cuts to the heart of why the Supreme Court fight is so crucial.

Once the justices depart, as most of them have, from the original understanding of the Constitution, they lack any guidance other than their own attempts at moral philosophy, a task for which they have not even minimal skills. Yet when it rules in the name of the Constitution, whether it rules truly of not, the Court is the most powerful branch of government in domestic policy. The combination of absolute power, disdain for the historic Constitution, and philosophical incompetence is lethal.

The Court has converted itself from a legal institution to a political one, and has made so many basic and unsettling changes in American government, life, and culture that a counterattack was inevitable, and long overdue.