“The Supreme Court has assumed such overwhelming national, unilateral authority”

Baylor prof Thomas Kidd on the Hobby Lobby case:

The fact that four of the justices would not extend even such a modest grant of religious liberty is sobering. It reveals again why perhaps the most important issue in presidential politics is the question of Supreme Court appointments. The Supreme Court has assumed such overwhelming national, unilateral authority on issues such as religious liberty, that the switch of just one justice can reverse the status of a basic freedom in America today. This is not a good system, and one wishes that on this and many other issues we could return to an actual federal system in which states and localities had leeway to craft their own policies according to local sensibilities, instead of those of five unelected justices. But we are where we are.