The late, great Justice Antonin Scalia once remarked, “The judge who always likes the results he reaches is a bad judge.” The principle underlying this axiom is lost on many, who instead render it the other way: Judges must automatically like the results they reach, because they reach the results they like. From there, politicians and pundits take it one step further, decrying any court ruling that deviates from their preferred policy outcomes as simply the result of jurists’ partisan bias. This hackneyed logic erodes the courts’ reputation as nonpartisan arbiters of the law. But it also has the more dangerous effect of conflating freedom to take an action with societal approval for such an action. This line of criticism has increased as President Trump nominates more judges to federal courts, but it is not new. On healthcare, same-sex marriage, or First Amendment freedoms, court decisions in recent decades have been distorted to brand judges improperly as partisan. Such clumsy or disingenuous analysis ignores the myriad examples of judges separating political preference from legal decisions and sets aside the fact that judges’ constitutional interpretations can vary widely. Dangerously, when commentary blurs the distinction between jurisprudence with preferred policies, the public ceases to view the judiciary as an independent branch of government. Instead, people begin to see the judiciary as another political branch, one that exists to impose its undemocratic political will rather than to protect...