In 1833, Joseph Story touched on the importance of the judicial system when he noted: “Personal security and private property rest entirely upon the wisdom, the stability, and the integrity of the courts of justice.”

The judicial system is obviously profoundly important — and also extremely susceptible. It’s under constant siege by those who abhor the Rule of Law, which is why Thomas Jefferson in 1819 wrote, “The Constitution … is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”

The Supreme Court is the last line of defense — or, in social activists’ minds, the last line of offense — which makes it extremely powerful, for good or ill. Thomas Jefferson was especially concerned about the latter. In 1821, he wrote, “It has long, however, been my opinion … that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body … working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one.”

Whether in the past or in the present, too many jurists have used their roles not to enforce constitutional rights but to implement their own objectives — the consequences of which are plainly obvious. Such dereliction is especially true of leftist judicial activists who think of our charter as a “living constitution.” In fact, upholding the Rule of Law is considered unfashionable by their standards. Ironically, it’s those who defend the Constitution who are most viciously assailed today.

This was intimated with scary brazenness this week. According to Fox News, “Several high-profile Senate Democrats [Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Richard Durbin, and Kirsten Gillibrand] warned the Supreme Court in pointed terms … that it could face a fundamental restructuring if justices do not take steps to ‘heal’ the court in the near future.”

Fox News adds, “The Democratic senators’ brief was filed in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. City of New York, which dealt with legal limitations on where gun owners could transport their licensed, locked, and unloaded firearms. They are urging the court to stay out of the case brought by the NRA-backed group, claiming that because the city recently changed the law to ease restrictions, the push to the Supreme Court is part of an ‘industrial-strength influence campaign’ to get the conservative majority to rule in favor of gun owners.”

The brief fumes, “Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’” But as Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw observes, “What [its] actually threatening to do is the most politically driven and drastic action imaginable in this scenario.” It wreaks of political malfeasance. How else can you parse the demand to, as The Daily Wire’s Paul Bois says, “vote liberal or else have conservatives rotated off the court”?

The Second Amendment is the palladium of liberties, therefore the Left rightly sees it as the biggest hindrance to the rule of men. So expect Democrats to use whatever “influence of politics” they can in their attempt to encroach on it — including by overhauling the Supreme Court for protecting the all-important Second Amendment.