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The Supreme Court’s staunchest defenders in recent years have come up with a stubborn yet plausible-sounding claim: They say that that SCOTUS, dominated by six Republican-appointed justices, does not actually have a 6–3 split. Instead, they insist, there’s a far more nuanced divide that does not break neatly along political lines. That assertion, always dubious, was blown out of the water once and for all on Tuesday, when the supermajority delivered four conservative 6–3 decisions over sharp dissents from the liberal justices. These rulings—in smaller but still important cases—were a blunt reminder that the GOP appointees remain in total control of the court and frequently wield their power precisely as the Trump administration wishes. But they also illustrated just how aggressively the supermajority is shredding the legacy of right-leaning swing justices who tried to temper their colleagues’ ideological fervor. In one case, this bloc overturned precedent that permitted lawsuits against corporations for human rights abuses. In another, it gutted individuals’ right to sue for damages over violations of their religious liberty and other freedoms. In a third, it gave the government far more latitude to persecute, detain, and deport green-card holders.

What’s alarming about these decisions is not just the outcomes, but the fact that the supermajority went as far as it possibly could in each of them. Again and again, it reached out for expansive holdings that did maximum damage to precedent, congressional authority, and civil liberties. There was, it seems, no member of the supposedly “moderate conservative” bloc that sought to tap the brakes, to exercise caution before radically reshaping the law. All six went full steam ahead in tearing down the guardrails constructed by their more moderate Republican-appointed predecessors. The problem is not merely that the court regularly divides 6–3; it’s that among those six, nobody seems inclined to serve as a check on the others’ most sweeping ambitions. With no more swing justices, the supermajority has no one left to pull it back from the brink.

This dynamic was on full display Tuesday in a trio of........

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