Beginning in 1973 with Roe v. Wade, establishing a woman’s constitutional right to choose an abortion, liberals have led a continual march for social change, primarily using the courts. Perhaps the largest social change since Roe was the Supreme Court’s recognition of the right to gay marriage in 2015, but there have been many other liberal victories along the way.

Next up on the liberal social agenda appears to be the abolition of the death penalty. With the announcement from the Department of Justice that it would resume carrying out the death penalty for federal death row inmates, not done since 2003, the response was dire and immediate. Ruth Friedman, director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project, called the death penalty “arbitrary, racially-biased, and rife with poor lawyering and junk science.” Sen. Kamala Harris called capital punishment “immoral and deeply flawed,” while former Vice President Joe Biden reversed yet another of his earlier positions, now opposing the federal death penalty.