Bar Brawl

THE conservative campaign against judicial usurpation may not be having much effect in the U.S. Senate, but it is clearly making some people nervous. Phil Anderson, incoming president of the American Bar Association, says, “An attack on activist judges is an attack on our Constitution. It is an attack on our tripartite system of government.” Similarly, former ABA President N. Lee Cooper recently charged that critics of the judiciary are “taking a page out of the George Wallace playbook.” Cooper also compared politicians who criticize activist courts to Communist Party officials in Ukraine who practiced “telephone justice”—i.e., the party officials demanded that judges phone them to find out what verdict should be handed down.

In short, the campaign to delegitimize criticism of activist judges has begun.

DT

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Daniel E. Troy

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THE conservative campaign against judicial usurpation may not be having much effect in the U.S. Senate, but it is clearly making some people nervous. Phil Anderson, incoming president of the American Bar Association, says, “An attack on activist judges is an attack on our Constitution. It is an attack on our tripartite system of government.” Similarly, former ABA President N. Lee Cooper recently charged that critics of the judiciary are “taking a page out of the George Wallace playbook.” Cooper also compared politicians who criticize activist courts to Communist Party officials in Ukraine who practiced “telephone justice”—i.e., the party officials demanded that judges phone them to find out what verdict should be handed down.

In short, the campaign to delegitimize criticism of activist judges has begun.