A remarkable column from Stephen Henderson, the deputy editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press, who used to cover the Supreme Court. A few gems:

1. "[T]he vacancies could be plentiful, particularly if a President Clinton or Obama serves two terms.... On the outside chance that the next president gets four or five appointments, we could be in store for a new core of young, liberal justices who will serve for a generation. That'll mean significant change in the august chambers of the court, where conservatives have, since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, put as definitive a stamp on the high court as any in its history." But somehow, despite that,

   No one's saying there should be a liberal dominance akin to what we've seen from conservatives over the last few decades. And the chances of that seem slim anyway.

   But in the next four or eight years, we might see a return of something I think is fairly important in the law: balance. We would all benefit from more of that.

   So a 5-4 conservative/moderative conservative Court is "dominance," but if several Justices retire and the Court switches to (say) 5-4 or 6-3 liberal/moderate liberal, that would just be "balance."

2. "The more conservative court orthodoxies, with their emphasis on cabined textual interpretation, restriction of individual liberties to those enumerated in the Constitution, and skepticism of government interference in economic issues, is just about the only school of thought that matters at the high court anymore." Got it — Lawrence v. Texas never happened; unenumerated abortion rights were overturned; likewise with other unenumerated rights (such as parental rights).

3. "It shouldn't matter whether you agree with those tenets or not; the truth is that they shouldn't be the only assumptions with importance." Of course it does matter whether one agrees with those tenets or not — if they are right, then they should prevail; if they are wrong, they shouldn't.

4. "With more Democratic-appointed justices, I think we'd see more pushback against the conservative dominance [among other things, on racial issues]. I think we'd see a whole category of more liberal legal thought get a stronger airing where it counts most." But of course the more liberal legal thought has gotten plenty of airing in dissents. By "stronger airing" the author must mean "victories." He's not looking for more debate or more balance, just more victories for his side; a perfectly plausible desire, but why deny it?

I should note, though, that the use of "equanimity" in the headline — "Balance the court: A Democratic president could bring equanimity to the Supreme Court" — might not be the author's fault. (Headlines are almost never written by the author of a column, though it's possible that the matter might be different for authors who are also editors of the newspaper.)