It’s been a record-setting year at SCOTUS, and next term promises more thrills and chills. Whether you’re a fan of the ascendency of the originalist/textualists channeling (and surpassing by a mile) the late Antonin Scalia or if you think the whole institution is going to hell in a handbasket, you have to agree that the weakest branch suddenly is making some big changes in the way we order our lives and administer our government. But do they know what they’re doing?

I don’t mean to question the outcome of the big cases of the last term. Some of them seemed inevitable. Others I understand, if not agree with. But the idea that the court has now decided that the first, last and only test in case of ambiguity (and ambiguity is the raison d’être of certiorari isn’t it?) should be what the words the drafters of a particular text meant at the time they chose them requires a deep and nuanced understanding of history. I’m not sure the institution has ever shown itself to be all that good when doing historical analysis.