{"id":2401,"date":"2008-12-05T09:07:24","date_gmt":"2008-12-05T14:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=2401"},"modified":"2008-12-05T09:10:33","modified_gmt":"2008-12-05T14:10:33","slug":"does-judicial-activist-mean-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2008\/12\/does-judicial-activist-mean-something\/","title":{"rendered":"Does “Judicial Activist” Mean Something?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Does the term “judicial activism” have some objective meaning? The Capital Times<\/em><\/a> does not seem to think so, reporting earlier this week:<\/p>\n

[C]ourt observers and legal scholars are skeptical that the descriptive terms [judicial activist and strict constructionist] have any meaning, except as buzzwords used by conservative candidates to create a clear distinction between themselves and their more liberal rivals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I do not intend to defend “strict constructionist,” which is the term the story uses to describe conservatives, because I do not think most conservatives are “strict constructionists.” To quote Justice Scalia<\/a>,<\/p>\n

I do not think the Constitution, or any text should be interpreted either strictly or sloppily; it should be interpreted reasonably. Many of my interpretations do not deserve the description “strict.” I do believe, however, that you give the text the meaning it had when it was adopted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Textualist and originalist are better terms. Judicial restraint used to be the preferred description, although judicial modesty is on the rise as the preferred label.<\/p>\n

My point in this post, however, is to defend the term “judicial activist” as possessing objective meaning.<\/p>\n

Chief Justice Abrahamson does not believe it does — she believes that “When you say somebody’s an activist judge, what you’re really saying is I don’t like that particular opinion.” It is, in other words, a subjective judgment by each person about any given case. Respectfully, I disagree.<\/p>\n

Professor Rick Esenberg defined restraint in his introductory essay <\/a>“A Preliminary Word About Judicial Activism and Restraint.”\u00a0 He writes that restraint “is the notion that judges ought to base their decisions on a source of authority that it outside of themselves and their notions of the just.” Judge Michael B. Brennan of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court has offered four “objective indicators of judicial activism,” <\/a>namely “flexible adherence to precedent, insufficient deference to political decision-makers, broad holdings and opinions, and broad judicial remedies.” The more present these indicators are, the more likely the opinion is departing from a source of authority outside themselves.<\/p>\n

Now, as Professor Esenberg points out, some precedents and some enacted laws should be overturned for violating the text of a higher law. But I think reasonable and honest people can step back, look at a body of work, and come to a conclusion about a whether a judge’s judicial philosophy is one of modesty or activism.<\/p>\n

(It is worth noting here that some liberals acknowledge that judicial activism exists and defend it for what they think are good reasons. Others, like Abrahamson, deny that there is such a thing as judicial activism\/restraint and treat all judges as interchangable “fair, neutral, non-partisan, and impartial” resolvers of cases.).<\/p>\n

In the Cap Times<\/em>, UW Professor Charles “Franklin said there is a positive side to the name-calling. Judicial law is inherently complex, and in general voters don’t understand it.”<\/p>\n

Voters may not read every single opinion (lawyers don’t!), but they certainly do have a good idea of what kind of judges they want. Exit polling<\/a> from the 2008 election shows that when given a choice between Barack Obama’s empathy quote ( “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”) and a judicial restraint position ( “We need judges who look at each individual equally. We need judges who will apply the law the same to each person regardless of an individual’s background or cultural or economic circumstances.” ), voters chose the restraint position 53 to 43. Lots of other polling bears out the same answer.<\/p>\n

We could use terms other than “judicial activism” and “judicial restraint.” As I say, I think “judicial restraint” will gradually be replaced by “judicial modesty.” But underlying the terms used is a fundamental understanding by voters that there are two types of judges: Those that do what the law requires, even when they don’t like that result personally, and those that do what the judge personally believes to be “just” or “right” in that case (“equitable” to use a legal term). “Judicial activist” currently describes the second class — it is more than a subjective judgment — it is a legitimate label grounded in thoughtful analysis of what the judge has written.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does the term “judicial activism” have some objective meaning? The Capital Times does not seem to think so, reporting earlier this week: [C]ourt observers and legal scholars are skeptical that the descriptive terms [judicial activist and strict constructionist] have any meaning, except as buzzwords used by conservative candidates to create a clear distinction between themselves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judges-judicial-process","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}