Supreme Court intervention in a matter of such radical importance -- a matter with human life at the very center -- was without precedent. We, the people, weren't to weigh in? Weren't to express, through democratically elected representatives, so much as an opinion (let alone a definitive judgment) on the value of unborn life and the putative duty of preserving same? Not as our nation's highest court saw things.

Yet we, the people -- a significant portion of us, anyway -- continue, much to the exasperation of Roe supporters, to see some matters differently. Candidate George W. Bush committed himself to appoint judges less swollen with Olympian pride, less inclined to pose as lawgivers, than certain former appointees proved. Candidate Bush became President Bush. He stuck to his word. Samuel Alito Jr. -- a man whose hallmarks are modesty and intelligence -- seems almost 100 percent sure to win confirmation.

And the consequences for Roe vs. Wade? Might a remodeled court someday shoot it down, returning life questions to the people themselves? The court actually might not, in consideration of Roe's nearly gray-bearded longevity. Time, as the saying goes, will tell. What's nice for now is that modesty-in-high-places seems about to win a big victory -- in the U.S. Senate chamber, of all unlikely places! Some days, some years, you take what you can get.