SCOTUS thinking

I'm too frazzled at the moment to explore this thought with any detail, but I wanted to get it out there in case I should come back to it.

Roberts and Miers have both said, in more or less the same language, that they are for judicial restraint. That's the phrase that's been bandied about and promoted by the talking-points propogators for the last few weeks. My question is, what precisely does that mean?

It could go one of two ways, and Roberts never indicated in his confirmation hearing which way it meant for him.

It could mean that as a justice, he would exercise judicial restraint and prevent himself from upholding or rejecting laws purely from an ideological stance, and that he truly would weigh the Constitution as the chief arbiter in any decision he made.

It could also mean the exact opposite. It could mean that he will legislate from the bench in an effort to promote an ideology to bring American law in line with some predetermined goal. This sense of "judicial restraint" could mean that he would overturn or uphold solely to return the law to achieve this goal.

The latter is likely what most conservatives would prefer, assuming that their agenda was the "predetermined goal". The latter definition, however, suffers from a logical inconsistency. It depends on a jurist becoming an activist for a cause to bolster that agenda. This, from a cause that detests, derides and decries judicial activism.

So, logically, if Roberts starts voting based on some ideological end-point that could be labelled as "conservative," conservatives should still have to detest, deride and decry. If they're against the concept of judicial activism.

The reality, I think, is far from that, and that they'd be alright with a judicial activist if he (and potentially, she) started tearing down the things the conservative movement disagrees with.

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