Is the United States Supreme Court really a court in the strict sense of the term? Or is it a political council that yields to the ideologies of its nine unelected members? That’s the overriding question as the high tribunal reviews the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling in Anderson v. Griswold, which disqualifies Donald Trump from appearing on that state’s presidential primary ballot under the insurrection clause (Section Three) of the 14th Amendment.

Courts are supposed to adjudicate issues based on the facts and the applicable law, without “fear or favor,” as the cliché goes. Political bodies, by contrast, decide issues on the basis of favored outcomes. The U.S. Supreme Court clearly falls into the latter category.

No decision in recent history revealed the political nature of the Supreme Court more starkly than its 2000 ruling in Bush v. Gore, which handed the presidency to George W. Bush. Anderson v. Griswold promises to follow in Bush v. Gore’s footsteps.

Bush v. Gore halted an ongoing recount of the vote in Florida, depriving the voters of that state, and by extension voters in the entire country, of their right to a fair determination of the true winner of the election. To justify its decision, the court’s five-member majority invented a theory that the use of different standards of vote counting in different Florida counties violated the Equal Protection Clause (Section One) of the 14th Amendment.

The truth was the exact opposite. If anything, equal protection principles required the recount to be completed. As Justice John Paul........

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