This is part of Opening Arguments, Slate’s coverage of the start of the latest Supreme Court term. We’re working to change the way the media covers the Supreme Court. Support our work when you join Slate Plus. In our years covering the Supreme Court, we have both slowly grown to despise the obligatory journalistic “curtain-raiser” that drops at the start of each new term. Academic review of the seven or eight ostensibly “big” cases as a set of horse-race questions inevitably misses and occludes the bigger picture: the way in which the majority selects certain cases to further a specific...