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Friday, April 30, 2010
Courts - More on: "The danger of judicial activism now comes from the right, not the left"
Echoing yesterday's ILB entry, which quoted an editorial column, today Charlie Savage and Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the NY Times report under the headline: "Obama Says Liberal Courts May Have Overreached." Some quotes:
WASHINGTON — In a seeming rejection of liberal orthodoxy, President Obama has spoken disparagingly about liberal victories before the Supreme Court in the 1960s and 1970s — suggesting that justices made the “error” of overstepping their bounds and trampling on the role of elected officials.Mr. Obama made his remarks Wednesday night against a backdrop of recent Supreme Court rulings in which conservative justices have struck down laws favored by liberals, most notably a January ruling that nullified restrictions on corporate spending to influence elections.
“It used to be that the notion of an activist judge was somebody who ignored the will of Congress, ignored democratic processes, and tried to impose judicial solutions on problems instead of letting the process work itself through politically,” Mr. Obama said.
“And in the ’60s and ’70s, the feeling was — is that liberals were guilty of that kind of approach. What you’re now seeing, I think, is a conservative jurisprudence that oftentimes makes the same error.”
He added, “The concept of judicial restraint cuts both ways.” * * *
Mr. Obama has criticized recent conservative Supreme Court rulings before — including the campaign-finance ruling, Citizens United, in his State of the Union address last January. But his remarks went notably further by drawing an equivalence to rulings a generation ago that have been widely celebrated by liberals as historic achievements.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 30, 2010 10:10 AM
Posted to Courts in general