Wave Maker: The Personification of Judicial Restraint

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Wednesday, July 20, 2005

The Personification of Judicial Restraint

While some of my most conservative friends are busy fretting that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts doesn't have enough of a track record to guarantee that he'll rule the way they want him to,Tim Chapman at Townhall.com points us to Judge Roberts' clear and eloquent articulation of the meaning of "judicial restraint":

My own judicial philosophy begins with an appreciation of the limited role of a judge in our system of divided powers. Judges are not to legislate and are not to execute the laws. . . . My judicial philosophy accordingly insists upon some rigor in ensuring that judges properly confine themselves to the adjudication of the case before them, and seek neither to legislate broadly not to administer the law generally in deciding that case.
Deciding the case . . . . requires an essential humility grounded in the properly limited role of an undemocratic judiciary in a democratic republic, a humility reflected in doctrines of deference to legislative policy judgments and embodied in the often misunderstood term “judicial restraint.” That restraint does not mean that judges should not act against the popular will. . . .[T]he framers expected them to be discerning the law, not shaping policy. That means the judges should not look to their own personal views or preferences in deciding the cases before them. Their commission is no license to impose those preferences from the bench.

And you don't like him why??

Posted by: Wave Maker / 9:52 AM/ |