NYT Op/Ed: Last Term's Winner at the Supreme Court - Judicial Activism

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/opinion/09mon4.html

Editorial Observer
Last Term’s Winner at the Supreme Court: Judicial Activism

By ADAM COHEN
Published: July 9, 2007
The Supreme Court told Seattle and Louisville, and hundreds more cities and counties, last month that they have to scrap their integration programs. There is a word for judges who invoke the Constitution to tell democratically elected officials how to do their jobs: activist.

President Bush, who created the court’s conservative majority when he appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, campaigned against activist judges, and promised to nominate judges who would “interpret the law, not try to make law.” Largely because of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, the court has just completed one of its most activist terms in years.

The individuals and groups that have been railing against judicial activism should be outraged. They are not, though, because their criticism has always been of “liberal activist judges.” Now we have conservative ones, who use their judicial power on behalf of employers who mistreat their workers, tobacco companies, and whites who do not want to be made to go to school with blacks.

The most basic charge against activist judges has always been that they substitute their own views for those of the elected branches. The court’s conservative majority did just that this term. It blithely overruled Congress, notably by nullifying a key part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, a popular law designed to reduce the role of special-interest money in politics.

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[Hawaii Hiker]

1. I hope Democrats drive this point home next year in political ads:

basically saying how significant it is to have a Democratic president making the next Supreme Court appointments...