WASHINGTON – Back when the Supreme Court justices took their seats last fall for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered their majestic courtroom, the hot controversy was whether too many cases were being decided without oral argument.

Nine months later, after a bombshell term that brought about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the striking down of at least one and potentially many other gun laws and a rethinking of the separation between church and state, the court has thrust itself into America's culture wars in a way experts say the nation has not witnessed in decades.