Judicial Activism Reconsidered

by Thomas Sowell

Like many catchwords, "judicial activism" has acquired so many different meanings as to obscure more than it reveals. Yet it is not a term that can simply be ignored as intellectually "void for vagueness," for at the heart of it are concerns about the very meaning and survival of law. Abandonment of the term not being a viable option, clarification becomes imperative.

This is a very long, very complex, and very important article, by America's leading intellectual. Heavily footnoted, it is written in the style of a College Thesis or a legal treatise. It deals with the most important legal point currently destroying our court system. I have created a shorthand term to explain my concerns about the concept of judicial activism. I call it "the rule of judges" versus "the rule of law". Judicial activism, as described by Sowell in this article, is "the rule of judges". I could not have written this article, but I concur completely. It is a brilliant denunciation of the resulting evil of the legal . . . no not legal . . . political philosophy of judicial activism.