A Judge With No Agenda
Superjudges. The rise of the lawmaking judge and the conversion of the Supreme Court into a sort of superlegislature make the political system less democratic. Conservatives and liberals both win some and lose some, but on major issues of the culture war the courts have heavily favored the left and attempted to settle controversial issues that should have been left to politics--most obviously abortion and affirmative action. On church and state, the courts have generally imposed the views of the secular elites, converting the Founding Fathers' ban on the federal establishment of a church into a broad program for eradicating religion from the public square. Even the recent baffling and apparently contradictory 5-to-4 decisions on the display of the Ten Commandments seem narrowly political. They bar new displays of the commandments, as in Kentucky, while allowing a token old one in Texas, probably so that the public won't get too inflamed about the plain meaning of the Kentucky decision.
No "agents of social change," please, on the Supreme Court. We need a modest and nonideological justice who is determined not to impose his or her politics from the bench.
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