Talk about not taking “no” for an answer. The indignation being kicked up today by Democrats after the Supreme Court thwarted their Student Loan amnesty scheme makes the two most infamous high court defiers, Andrew Jackson and George Wallace, look meek as lambs. “The fight is not over,” President Biden avers. The left’s overheated rhetoric, undermining the court’s legitimacy, raises alarms for the future of Constitutional government.

“The hypocrisy is clear,” Senator Schumer says, griping that while “justices accept lavish, six-figure gifts,” they ignore “Americans saddled with student loan debt.” He urges Mr. Biden to use “remaining legal routes” to achieve “student debt cancellation.” Senator Warren says Mr. Biden “has more tools to cancel student debt — and he must use them.” Mr. Biden, for his part, says “I will stop at nothing to find other ways to deliver relief.” 

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez goes even further than her comrades in the Senate, questioning the integrity of Justice Samuel Alito. The justice “accepted tens of thousands of dollars in lavish vacation gifts from a billionaire who lobbied to cancel the student loan forgiveness,” she tweeted. “After the gifts, Alito voted to overturn.” She added that the court’s “corruption undercuts its own legitimacy by putting its rulings up for sale.”

We don’t buy their allegations of corruption even for a second. Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion in Biden v. Nebraska strikes at the heart of two of the hallmarks of modern liberal governance. These core values, as it were, are a lack of respect for the written letter of the law and a wilful disregard for the fundamentals of our Constitution, starting with separated powers, whenever they find it helps advance their political agenda.

President Biden’s loan forgiveness scheme — a cynical election-year ploy — is chided by Chief Justice Roberts for relying on a 2003 measure, the “HEROES” act, that offers no legal authority for writing off student debts. The law does allow the executive to “waive or modify” regulations relating to student loans, the chief explains. Yet to justify the amnesty plan, Mr. Biden had “to rewrite that statute from the ground up.”  

Worse, Mr. Biden arrogated to himself a key legislative branch function by trying to write off billions in student debts. “Among Congress’s most important authorities is its control of the purse,” the Chief Justice says. He notes that it has long served as a “check upon profusion and extravagance.” He finds it “odd to think that separation of powers concerns evaporate” just because Uncle Sam “is providing monetary benefits rather than imposing obligations.”

Yet if the reactions to today’s ruling by elected Democrats are strident, the comments from the party’s activists would make Jackson and Wallace blush. Wallace famously stood in the schoolhouse door to block integration. Jackson demanded Chief Justice Marshall “enforce” his own ruling for the Cherokees. A self-described “Gen Z-led nonpartisan organization” called the ruling “an attack on young people” and the court itself “illegal.”

Does this suggest a regression? In 2003 Justice Stephen Breyer noted with satisfaction how America had evolved since Jackson “refused to obey the Court.” The Nine, he noted, had “decided a host of controversial decisions, ranging from abortion, to religion, to Bush v. Gore,” sparking “a vast amount of commentary,” much of it “heated.” Yet there was no doubt, he said, “that losers as well as winners will abide by the result, and so will the public.”

Chief Justice Roberts’ ruling sees this civility ebbing. “Reasonable minds may disagree with our analysis,” he says. Yet, he says, don’t “mistake this plainly heartfelt disagreement for disparagement,” urging that “the public not be misled either.” That “would be harmful to this institution and our country.” It’s telling that the worst in today’s Democrats surfaces after a ruling reminding them America was framed as a government of laws, not of men.