These back-to-back appointments created a new supermajority of six conservatives on the court. This altered not only the rulings of the court, but also the selection of cases the court would hear.

The court chooses the few cases it will hear from the thousands of applications for review. If there were only five conservative-leaning justices, they could not guarantee they would hold the majority necessary for a final vote.

Often, Chief Justice John Roberts, generally considered an institutionalist determined to safeguard the public perception of the court, or Gorsuch, widely seen as a libertarian-leaning protector of the rights of criminal defendants, immigrants and Native Americans, joined the liberals to flip a ruling.

A supermajority of six conservative justices gives them the confidence to take on major cases. Five makes a majority on the Supreme Court, but six can make a movement.

One view of the dramatic change at the court is that it reflects a long-running debate between two constitutional theories, or competing ways of reading the document.

The new court upholds originalism, which has replaced its rival, living constitutionalism.

The theory of originalism argues that the core purpose of a written Constitution is to protect against the government’s inevitable bad behavior. The best way to defend individual rights and ensure a stable government is to enforce the Constitution’s exact language and the meaning it expressed to the Americans who ratified it.

From an originalist view, allowing clever lawyers to see the Constitution as evolving without the endorsement of the people simply defeats its purpose. So this constitutional theory holds that the document can only be changed by amendment, but not by courts.

The theory of living constitutionalism, meanwhile, is rooted in the idea that the Constitution should adapt to the American people’s evolving values, as well as the needs of contemporary society. This allows the Supreme Court to reinterpret the meaning of the language and expand the rights protected by the Constitution.

One side of the debate believes that upholding the true meaning of a written Constitution requires stable principles, while the second believes it requires evolving ones.

...continued