[comnetxr]

This seems to assume that the Court's initial resistance is a signifier that the policy was _truly_ illegitimate, and their eventual acceptance was a fake legitimacy being bestowed upon tyranny. However, there are plenty of times where the Court's initial resistance was the tyranny, and the eventual acceptance was to _remove_ legitimacy from an illegitimate policy. Besides the obvious cases where the supreme court upheld segregation, I would argue that on average the trajectory of the court has been towards properly legitimate policies under our Constitutional principles rather than towards greater and greater perversion of them. On other principles, like federal power vs states rights, there has been a clear trajectory but I wouldn't identify either side as clearly legitimate or clearly tyranny.

[JasonFruit]

I think you read my assumption correctly — I believe the court has generally given, not gained, ground on matters of liberty. It's especially on those "other principles" you mention that we disagree most, and that probably explains our disagreement on the point at hand. I don't think either of us would gain from extending the disagreement here.