Above the fray, but part of it

摘要

It is lucky for the nine justices of America's Supreme Court that they need not seek re-election. In the last days of their latest term they were denounced from the left for one ruling, which narrowed the scope of a 1965 law against racist barriers to voting, and from the right for a second, which struck down federal curbs on the rights of same-sex married couples. John Lewis, a black Democrat who marched with Martin Luther King, accused the court of sticking "a dagger through the heart" of the Voting Rights Act. Michele Bachmann, a vocal Republican, charged the court with trying to dismantle marriage, a creation from "the hand of God".