Sitting justices of the Supreme Court do not relinquish life tenure lightly. Ruth Bader Ginsburg provoked a squall of protest from liberal commentators recently when she dismissed suggestions that she retire before the end of President Obama’s second term. In 1972, William Douglas scrapped his retirement plans when Richard Nixon’s reelection conjured the specter of a hostile replacement. But perhaps no justice was ever more determined to stay put than William Howard Taft. In 1929, two weeks after Black Tuesday, the former president turned Chief Justice declared, “I must stay on the court in order to prevent the Bolsheviki from getting control.”

Douglas and Taft were both aware of the political consequences of leaving the Court. Contemporary justices are less willing to acknowledge the partisan dimensions of their office. Despite describing the current Court as “activist,” Ginsburg seems to be untroubled by the prospect of a conservative replacement. This is in keeping with the prevailing mythology about the Supreme Court. As Ginsburg’s colleague John Roberts put it during his 2005 confirmation hearings, justices with the power of judicial review — the power, in effect, to change the law by reviewing the constitutionality of legislation — should strive to be impartial “umpires.”

Liberals lambasted Roberts for arguing in bad faith, but in reality they share his vision. In the liberal political imagination, the Supreme Court is an institution that must vindicate principles rather than practice politics. As the philosopher Richard Rorty once acknowledged, liberals “turn to the judiciary as the only political institution for which we can still feel something like awe. This awe  . . .  is respect for the ability of decent men and women to sit down around tables, argue things out, and arrive at a reasonable consensus.”