The US Supreme Court is not a radical institution, nor is it likely to become one as a result of any particular presidential election. The risks for the judiciary in presidential elections are a lot lower than many people imagine. This is not because there are no significant ideological or methodological differences among judges. Differences do exist, and they display party affiliation to some extent. And they matter – not just on public issues such as abortion rights and racial discrimination but also in those procedures that actually guide the way lower courts handle a large variety of legal cases. That said, the courts have pretty strong institutional defences against radicalism of any kind. For one thing, the judiciary’s power is spread among more than 800 federal judges, no one of whose views matter all that much in the broad scheme of things. Even on the Supreme Court the idiosyncrasies or ideological extremism of any one judge can have only a limited effect. Without four like- minded judges, his or her views are just noise.