Professor David Strauss attributes the U.S. Supreme Court’s reactionary jurisprudence to a breakdown of elite consensus. He observes that lawyers and judges disagree about the proper “victims” of our political process: Are they Black, Brown, and LGBTQ+ people or, instead, Whites, Christians, and gun owners? Under such elite “polarization,” Strauss worries the jurisprudential approach that emerged from Carolene Products allows for judicial intervention on behalf of groups loaded with political power. Even then, he insists on the classic liberal defense of the courts: that courts serve as an important if imperfect check against the majoritarian domination of minorities.

Since the Ferguson and Baltimore uprisings, legal scholarship has undergone a profound reckoning with police violence. The emerging structural account of police violence recognizes that it is routine, legal, takes many shapes, and targets people based on their race, class, and gender. But legal scholarship remains fixated on investing in the police to repair and…