Judicial Activism? A Conservative Phenomenon

While I have not been taking full advantage of my subscription to the New Yorker Magazine, I did get the full experience in the latest issue with popular law journalist Jeffrey Toobin's article "Money Unlimited: How Roberts Orchestrated Citizens United." I encourage anyone interested in law or current events to read it, as it describes how one of the most pertinent modern supreme court decisions came about, and with it the controversial establishment of corporate personhood and relaxing of campaign finance restrictions.

There are a number of very interesting and somewhat depressing insights presented in the article, the most interesting to me is something Toobin brings up briefly, almost in passing. Judicial activism, a point of outcry among conservatives, is in reality a largely conservative phenomenon that the proceedings from the Citizens United case providing an illustration. Toobin uses the term "conservative judicial activism" to refer to efforts of conservative justices to influence the law in manners not necessarily within the parameters of the court's intended constitutional purpose, that of being an independent mediator of power between different institutions of government. This case of Citizens United is a perfect demonstration of this conservative judicial activism in action, with some of the justices grasping a procedural technicality to create drastic and undesirable effects on the law in favor of the right wing cause.

Go ahead and read it.