Activist Judges

President Barack Obama will soon choose a replacement for the Supreme Court Justice to succeed Justice David Souter.

The Republicans and right-wing pundits have already indicated that no matter who President Obama chooses, they believe he will choose an activist judge.

In the language of a conservative, that means that the judge is not a 'strict constructionist' and therefore will be pro-choice, pro-stem cell research and pro-same sex marriage. Critics object to justices who inject their own beliefs into their decisions.

As the conservatives are pontificating on this issue, Jeffrey Tobin's New Yorker article, No More Mr. Nice Guy, explores the decisions of Chief Justice John Roberts.

In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.

It's looking more and more like Justice Roberts is an activist judge...Republican style!