Why the judicial battle is important

Brian C. Anderson elegantly sums up what's really at stake in the upcoming Supreme Court nomination battle:

Regardless of your view of the specific policies at issue, it is vital to America's future that Bush win this battle for the courts: the Supreme Court's politicized role in recent decades is corroding the self-government at the heart of American constitutionalism. In a democracy, voters, not unelected judges, decide the momentous questions. When the Supreme Court forces its policy preferences on the American people without the clear warrant of a constitutional text, as has happened often in the last 50 years, it is acting more as an "anti-democratic Caesar" than as the impartial referee it's supposed to be, in Justice Scalia's view. Moreover, by politicizing constitutional law, the Court has weakened the rule of law that is the bedrock of our constitutional form of government. As Justice Thomas notes, if law is just politics, "then there are no courts at all, only legislatures, and no Constitution or law at all, only opinion polls." Why then would you need unelected judges to perform the same function as an elected congress?