On Friday, the Supreme Court upended the convictions of a group of January 6 defendants, ruling that the Justice Department had improperly prosecuted them under a statute that prohibits obstruction of an official proceeding. The justices found that the provision—which carries an extremely punitive sentence of up to 20 years in prison—applies to people who did things like alter or destroy documents or other evidence, not to people who disrupted a session of Congress by storming the Capitol. As a result, a relatively small subset of people convicted for their role in the insurrection could be retried or resentenced and might spend less time in prison. Many liberals were no doubt alarmed to learn that the conservative-dominated court had imposed new limits on January 6 prosecutions.