The Times notes that he had originally assigned the opinion to be written by Justice Samuel Alito. But, after the revelation that Alito had flown an American flag upside down to symbolize solidarity with those who had stormed the capital, Robert again sprang into action. He benched Alito and wrote the opinion favoring the insurrectionists himself.

One has to wonder, given how frequently the Supreme Court’s chief justice seems removed from the social and political realities of the country. As revealed by my Times colleagues Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak in their remarkable,