As goes the Supreme Court, so goes American constitutional law—for better or for worse. In an article recently published on this site, Erin Hawley argues that “worse” is the order of the day, and the worst may be yet to come.
Picking up on some comments Hillary Clinton made during the second presidential debate, Hawley claims that “[d]ebates over religious liberty, marriage, and abortion suggest that both left and right have abandoned the idea of judicial restraint” in favor of “judicial engagement”—the latter which Hawley seems to equate with judicial indifference to the Constitution. Hawley argues in favor of a “restrained” Supreme Court, in the sense of being broadly deferential to “decision
made by the people’s representatives.” This kind of court would be “boring,” she says approvingly.
Hawley’s arguments are unpersuasive and her concerns about judicial engagement are unwarranted. If widely embraced, judicial engagement would give constitutional conservatives something to get genuinely excited about...
Read more at: http://thefederalist.com/2016/11/08/want-judicial-engagement-not-judicial-restraint/
