Unrestrained

IN the conservative imagination, the Supreme Court’s last term still glows brightly. Less than a year ago, the Court refused to grant President Clinton a stay in the Paula Jones case and threw out a challenge to the line-item veto. The Court also invalidated a large part of the Brady Act as an unconstitutional infringement on states’ rights—the second major ruling since 1995 to reinvigorate federalism. And to cap things off, the Justices unanimously overturned two lower-court rulings permitting assisted suicide. The Right was triumphant, the Left despondent. “The era of liberal judicial activism,” a noted liberal law professor lamented in the pages of the New York Times, “is long gone.”

Would that it were. At best, the Rehnquist Court has done to judicial excess what Ronald Reagan did to federal spending: slowed its growth. Granted, the Court has given the Right a fair amount to cheer about—especially in its rulings breathing fresh life into the Takings Clause and the Tenth Amendment. But it has hardly adopted a consistent originalism, the doctrine that holds that judges should attempt to apply the law as it was understood when enacted instead of ruling according to their personal whims.

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Max Boot

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Physician-Assisted Suicide

IN the conservative imagination, the Supreme Court’s last term still glows brightly. Less than a year ago, the Court refused to grant President Clinton a stay in the Paula Jones case and threw out a challenge to the line-item veto. The Court also invalidated a large part of the Brady Act as an unconstitutional infringement on states’ rights—the second major ruling since 1995 to reinvigorate federalism. And to cap things off, the Justices unanimously overturned two lower-court rulings permitting assisted suicide. The Right was triumphant, the Left despondent. “The era of liberal judicial activism,” a noted liberal law professor lamented in the pages of the New York Times, “is long gone.”

Would that it were. At best, the Rehnquist Court has done to judicial excess what Ronald Reagan did to federal spending: slowed its growth. Granted, the Court has given the Right a fair amount to cheer about—especially in its rulings breathing fresh life into the Takings Clause and the Tenth Amendment. But it has hardly adopted a consistent originalism, the doctrine that holds that judges should attempt to apply the law as it was understood when enacted instead of ruling according to their personal whims.