On an Election Night replete with good news for political and judicial conservatives, one of the best results is the decision by Iowa voters against the retention of three of the state supreme court justices who were complicit in the utterly implausible invention of a state constitutional right to same-sex marriage. With virtually all precincts having reported, the Iowa secretary of state’s website (when I consulted it just before publishing this post) shows that each of the three justices has been voted out of office with “no” votes in the 54%-55% range. 

Many folks who blather about “judicial independence” without ever stopping to think about how that value should properly be defined will decry the Iowa citizenry’s exercise of its lawful power. But defenders of constitutional government should welcome this sound (if, alas, partial) measure of retributive justice against a blatant act of judicial imperialism.