Bench Memos

This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—March 27

1931—Stephen Reinhardt is born in New York.  Appointed to the Ninth Circuit by Jimmy Carter in 1980, Judge Reinhardt has earned notoriety as the “liberal badboy of the federal judiciary.”  In his overtly political view of judging, “The judgments about the Constitution are value judgments.  Judges exercise their own independent value judgments. You reach the answer that essentially your values tell you to reach.”  Undeterred by, and indeed defiantly proud of, being perhaps the most overturned judge in history (frequently by a unanimous Supreme Court), Reinhardt declares, “They can’t catch them all.”

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