Back in 1787 when the Founders were gathered in Philadelphia and were setting about the business of creating an entirely new form of governance, several things were clear to them, or at least they thought certain things were clear.

First off, they were quite sure the branch of government that would pose the greatest risk to liberty would be the legislative branch. The sole power to make law was seen as a massive and possibly corruptible power. The genius, at least as it was seen at the time, was the idea to split the lawmaking power across two different bodies, the House and the Senate, and to create a system, by election, term in office, and other details, in which the two branches would have a natural rivalry and a competition for power that would result in lots of infighting and no one body gaining too much power.

James Madison’s famous Federalist 10 explains that faction — the desire of people to divide into special-interest groups (like, say, political parties) to obtain more power than the mere number of their membership would suggest — is correct. Madison’s notion was faction, as he said was “sown in the nature of man,” and could never be eliminated. His solution was a large republic, wherein there would be so many factions no one group would ever be able to obtain too much power.

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

The greatest fear was of the legislature, so the U.S. Constitution spends the most time in specifying the things U.S. Congress can and, far more importantly, cannot do. Thus, if you pull out your pocket copy of the Constitution (I’ll wait here while you get it), you will see Article 1, on how Congress shall be set up, is by far the longest, most detailed and most limiting of all the articles.

The second-most feared branch was the executive. With a single decision maker, the executive branch provided a very needed set of skills: energy, secrecy and dispatch, as Alexander Hamilton called them. A president can act quickly, if, say, an invading army landed on U.S. shores, and he can do so with the secrecy and great energy the task requires, unlike a large body of men meeting in a congress to debate the issue.

Yet such a person must be checked, lest they become an autocrat (even if only on the first day). So, the Founders added quite a few restrictions (checks, if you will) on the powers of a president, making Article 2, which created the executive branch, the second longest and most detailed of the branches.

Lastly among the “creation articles” is Article 3, which created the court system. Given the courts were seen as the least threatening to liberty, as they could only decide on what was placed before them, it is not surprising Article 3 is by far the least detailed and least spelled out of the branch-creating articles. Article 1 has 2,302 words, Article 2 has 1,025, and poor little Article 3 only has 372.

Thus, I believe the Founders, should they pop up today (gratuitous credit: HamiltonLives.com), they would be shocked at the power of the U.S. Supreme Court in today’s society, and might well conclude, as I have long ago do, that the judicial branch, and most especially the Supreme Court, have become a fully partisan branch of government and should be regarded (and treated) as such.

For proof, one need look no further than the story this week wherein the SCOTUS jumped into the 2024 election with both feet, clearly aimed at helping the court majority’s favorite convicted felon.

For decades, and without serious objection from either side of the aisle, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. court system overall, has held the courts should take no action on casing affecting elections when those elections are near. There has been some debate about what “near” means, with some groups arguing for 30 days prior to voting and others saying 90, but the consensus was the same: courts should not act on political questions close to when citizens start voting.

Again, this has been the standard of the entire court system for decades, until the John Roberts Court of today, now likely to be regarded by future historians as only slightly better than the court of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, which is forever tarnished by Dred Scott and other outrageous decisions.

The Roberts court — though, in fairness, perhaps it should be called the Trump Court — has regularly and radically ruled against long-standing principles. Remember back when there was a more liberal court, and the conservatives were up in arms about the SCOTUS ignoring decades of precedent? Remember the label “activists court”?

Well, it turns out “radical court intervention” is rather a point of view. The current court is among the most radical, activist and precedent-denying courts in the history of the nation. And the decision this week to intervene in Virginia’s election, allowing the state to purge (and think about the historic implications of that word) some 1,600 voters from the roles of active voters, is stunning in its scope and its abandonment of previous principles of judicial restraint.

The case was brought by some on the radical right, hoping to find and eliminate likely liberal voters (remember when Republicans campaigned on ideas, and not the idea of limiting the voting of some Americans?).

Simply put, the form used for motor vehicle and license issuing in Virginia was poorly designed. Perhaps the fellow that designed the infamous “butterfly ballot” in Florida back in 2000 that put George W. Bush in office moved to Virginia. Roughly 1,600 Virginians, in filling out DMV paperwork, checked the wrong box (apparently easily done given the design) and declared themselves to be non-citizens, which, of course, would render them ineligible to vote.

Rather than send a clarification to those voters months ago, asking them to specifically affirm or deny their citizenship, the GOP leadership in Virginia announced they would simply purge all those folks. Not surprisingly, court cases arose, and even Trump-appointed lower court judges sided with letting those people “cure” their ballot problems rather than allowing them to be purged. All those courts agreed to prevent the purge, right up until the Supreme Court. In a one-page notice, the SCOTUS issued an order allowing the voter purge. And they did that one week before the election, violating decades of previous precedents.

Given all three Trump appointees committed perjury in their confirmation hearings (they all agreed Roe v Wade was “settled law”), I’m not too surprised at the lack of honor and intellectual honesty, but it is still shocking. A week before an election, SCOTUS ruled in a way to aid one candidate.

We are fortunate Virginia is not considered a true swing state, and I’m sure the Dems there are reaching out to all 1,600 folks in hopes of getting their voting status properly reinstated, but I am still shocked and troubled by the GOP’s master plan to keep those they see as, what, enemies within(?), from voting, rather than arguing the issues.

Chief Justice Roberts, I would hope, is deeply concerned about the label that history will assign to his tenure.

It won’t be good.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.