"Measured by the low standards of the desperate, the Supreme Court's 2013-14 term was on the whole a spectacularly good one."

That is the assessment of Michael Stokes Paulsen, writing in the November 2014 issue of First Things -- 2014 Supreme Court Roundup: An Explanation of the Court's Affirmations of Our Right Not to Go Along. (HT: How Appealing)

A few morsels below, but one must read the whole thing not only to assess Paulsen's analysis but also to appreciate his inimitable prose:

The biggest cases decided by the Supreme Court in the term that ended this past July concerned, almost without exception, First Amendment liberties of expression, association, and free exercise of religion. And that is appropriate. Those of us whose views are not in accord with the current trend of national politics and policies have little left if deprived of the rights to dispute, to dissent, to resist, to refrain, to refuse, to contest. These freedoms are the last line of defense.

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It is a parlous state of affairs when we must depend on the Supreme Court as the bulwark of our most vital natural rights and civil liberties—freedom of religion, freedom of expression and group association, freedom of conscience, the rights to live, to work, and to raise a family. The Court has not always, or even very often, done well on this score. With distressing frequency, it has performed poorly, shortchanging rights plainly written in the Constitution and inventing illegitimate ones nowhere to be found in the text. The Court tends to bow to political pressure and blow with prevailing cultural and popular winds.

Measured by the low standards of the desperate, the Supreme Court’s 2013–14 term was on the whole a spectacularly good one. The term was, if anything, arelief. In the cases that really mattered, the Court reached the right results and gave support to the rights of dissenters, albeit with more equivocation and labor than one might have preferred. The opinions typically were not sweeping, beautiful landmarks. But at least they were not the cataclysms that we have so often come to dread, and see.

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A measure of the success of the past year’s term is to contemplate what things would have looked like if the Court had gotten these cases wrong. Religious persons, groups, and businesses could be coerced to support and pay for abortion drugs by administrative fiat. Men and women who wish to counsel pregnant women against abortion could be prevented from doing so on public property near clinics. Citizens could be forbidden from ­financially supporting as many political candidates as they chose. Politicians could sue, or threaten to sue, citizens to punish them for expressing critical views, and effectively shut down opposition. Workers could be forced by law to support political causes with which they disagree. The Court held the line against such outcomes.