As thtey charge through the eventful first ioo days, President Obama and his allies are racking up legislative victories. Soon they will have to win the votes of a new audience: men and women in black robes. As the former constitutional-law professor surely knows, that can be a tough crowd. Here's the core constitutional fact: a progressive president and Congress now face a conservative judiciary, for the first time since 1937. Obama'sambitious agenda, if enacted, must go before federal courts-where judges can rewrite or strike down key provisions. From the TARP bank bailout, to climate change "cap and trade," to health-care reform, new laws could face an array of judicial doctrines recently honed by conservative lawyers. We can't know for sure, and carefully crafted laws usually withstand judicial scrutiny. Still, imagine if Hillarycare had passed in 1994. Does anyone think the Rehn-quist Court would not have vivisected those parts it found unpalatable?
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