Religious liberty. Terrorism. Same-sex marriage. Gun rights. All in one day. On Monday, the United States Supreme Court finished its term with cases that cut to the country’s deepest divides. The next term, which ends a year from now, will have far more blockbusters.

The question is, How will Americans handle it? The solidarity that kept America together through the severe strains of Vietnam and the toppling of Jim Crow was at least partly born of shared sacrifice and purpose, first in World War II, then the cold war.

Today, that solidarity is at a low ebb. Rebuilding it during the year ahead might call for sacrifice of a different sort.

 “[E]ven the best-designed legal institutions and practices may yield decisions which many believe to be mistaken,” Columbia University professor Michele Moody-Adams tells The Atlantic. These are the inevitable “strains of commitment” to any democracy, she adds. The path forward is in finding a deeper foundation for our sense of unity. “Contemporary life erects many barriers to respect and concern for our common humanity, but the future of our democracy demands that we learn how to transcend them.”