Justice & Law Quote by Jay Alan Sekulow

Sekulow is doing two things at once: diagnosing a court he wants to pressure, and reassuring an audience he wants to steady. Calling the Supreme Court "conflicted" is a lawyerly way of saying the outcomes are unstable, driven by crosscutting coalitions and case-specific anxieties rather than a clean ideological line. It’s not an insult so much as a strategic frame: if the justices are divided, then persuasion is still possible; today’s majority is not destiny.

Then comes the pivot that matters: "However, when it comes to speech issues generally, the court has been protective". That "generally" is the tell. It’s a hedge meant to smuggle confidence into a moment of uncertainty, appealing to the Court’s self-image as the First Amendment’s guardian even when particular disputes (often politically radioactive ones) make that guardianship look selective. Sekulow is invoking a mythos of continuity: whatever the noise of headline cases, there’s a deeper judicial instinct to defend speech.

The subtext is also about legitimacy. By praising the Court’s "protective" stance, he’s flattering an institution whose favor he seeks while subtly warning that inconsistency on "these cases" could tarnish its reputation. And as a litigator, he’s speaking to more than lay readers: to clerks, justices, and the legal commentariat who care about narrative. If you can cast your client’s position as aligned with the Court’s best version of itself, you’ve already argued half the case before the merits briefing starts.