Last week's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision signaled the end of the Court's 2005 term. Terms typically last from October to June. This term, the court saw two new justices -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito -- added to the court. Both justices are decidedly conservative, and with the absence of Sandra Day O'Connor, the court has shifted to the right.

But Justice Anthony Kennedy -- a conservative -- has become the new "swing" vote, writing concurring opinions in 5-4 decisions in which the "liberal" point of view prevailed.

Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, wrote an op-ed for USA Today in which he summarized the effects of Roberts and Alito on the last term and observed that they "proved every bit as ideological in major cases as predicted."

More importantly, Turley noted that this term's decisions marked a significant -- and frightening -- shift in the court's thinking:

These votes reveal a new vision of our society emerging from the new conservative base of the court with Roberts and Alito. It is a society with few checks on the government except when it comes to environmental protection, private property, affirmative action, or religious practices. It is the very transformation that many wanted to discuss in the confirmation hearings but were blocked by the refusal of the nominees to answer questions and the refusal of senators to insist on such answers.

If Turley is correct, then the court's right-hand side has become the evil conservative enemy we've always feared: a monster that wants to invade our privacy, allow the state unrestricted access to our homes, declare what our religion should be, and at the same time insist that it is for "smaller government" -- at least, as far as checking large corporations. Government should be free to pry into our bedrooms and our minds; government should be free to tell us what we can and cannot choose to do in our personal lives, even if those decisions affect no one but ourselves; government should be allowed to imprison us indefinitely without stating that we've done anything wrong, as long as it justifies that detention with the T-word. Government should execute evil-doers, even if there's a possibility that the evil-doers are actually innocent -- but only because it would be wasteful to spend more money trying to figure out if someone it was going to execute was actually guilty.

Thankfully, many cases were decided correctly. Hamdan, for example, successfully -- but narrowly -- put a stop on the Bush administration's assertions of total, unquestionable power. Georgia v. Randolph upheld the Fourth Amendment even as Hudson v. Michigan took it away. Gonzales v. Oregon finally put an end to John Ashcroft's ridiculous litigation against Oregon's assisted-suicide law, deciding after five years that the Oregon statute was constitutional.

Things are not as bad as Turley paints them: right now, it's Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts staunchly on the right, and that's a minority. But it's only a minority by one vote, and it's less of a minority than existed before, when Sandra Day O'Connor wasn't sure to vote with the conservatives. We should not be terrified immediately, but we should be worried.