There are memorable Supreme Court terms and then there are Supreme Court terms like the one we have just witnessed. No one retired between the first Monday of October 2004 and this past Monday. There were no seminal decisions affecting the legal war on terrorism. No grand constitutional crises were averted. And nothing the justices decided is likely to fundamentally alter the political, cultural or religious tensions that now reign.

Every term, just like this term, the court reapportions, in ways large and small, rights and responsibilities, power and priorities, rules and standards, liabilities and limitations. Under the Constitution, the justices more often tinker than they dismantle, and this past term surely was a term of tinkering.

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