All of us who saw the shocking violence of January 6th that the US Capitol knew then and there that American democracy was in clear peril（危险）, but the sheer（绝对的） spectacle（景象） of that moment can be misleading（ 令人误解的）. It can lead us to lose sight of how the attack on the US Capitol was just the culmination of a long, slow-moving campaign against our democracy, not just through violence, but also through law. I want to untangle one thread（线） in that campaign. My story is about how an institution that we look to as a guardian（[法] 监护人） of the rule of law, the courts, can be turned into an instrument for corroding（ 腐蚀） our democracy. At the beginning of our republic（共和国）, the framers of the Constitution（章程） created a third unelected branch to our national government called the federal courts. Their aim in so doing was importantly to bolt in a safeguard against the misuse（滥用） of public power by elected politicians.

  Despite that important and noble（贵族的） aspiration（渴望）, those federal courts have never been able to fully escape the pull of partisan（党派的） gravities（地心引力） they've never been able to properly do their job. Now, it might seem there's something paradoxical（矛盾的）, even dangerous, about speaking of judges as a threat to democracy. Yet, in the early 21st century, there has been a sea change in the nature of the threat to democracy around the world. Once it was the military coup（砰然而有效的一击） or the declaration（（纳税品等的）申报） of emergency that was used to etch（蚀刻） out the edge to self-rule. Today, democracies, enemies have found ways to turn the institutions and the laws that are necessary for self-rule against the project of democracy. From Venezuela to Hungary, from Turkey to Poland, democratic backsliding now happens through law, not against it, with the courts, not against them.

  This is no less true in the United States. It's not just a matter of throwing the occasional（偶然的） presidential（总统的） election, as happened in Florida（佛罗里达镇（位于密苏里州）佛罗里达州（美国州名）） in 2000, as almost happened in Pennsylvania（宾夕法尼亚州（美国州名）） in 2020. The Supreme Court has undermined（破坏） key safeguards for free and fair elections. The court has gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and it has hollowed out our constitutional（宪法的） right to vote. As a result, states have been able to enact（制定法律） a slew of voter suppression measures leading many to lose the franchise（特权）. The justices have also consistently blocked campaign finance laws, which are aimed at preventing the capture of our representative bodies by wealthy elites（<法>[集合名词]精华）.

  And at the same time that the wealthy have received a leg up, the court has consistently stood in the way of working class efforts to organize politically through labor unions. How could this be? In 1787, when the Framers sat down to create a system of independent courts, they didn't have a model to emulate（仿真）.