Ultraliberal Justice Stevens: "I see myself as a conservative, to tell you the truth, a judicial conservative"

He may be more accurate that NRO's Bench Memos credits him.

Judicial activism comes from a royalist impulse, of course -- benevolent Philosopher Kings imposing "Good" on a population over which they have total power, and to which they owe no accountability, whether the hoi polloi recognizes it as "Good" or not.

That Royalist theory of judicial power is precisely contradictory to the democratic theory, that the public shall make its own laws through participatory democracy.

So, in a way, Stevens is the ultimate royalist/conservative, while Scalia is a democratic radical.

This would be an interesting experiment to let play out, were it not for the inconvenient fact that the Constitution itself endorses one and repudiates the other.

posted by Ace at 06:17 PM

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