Succinctly explaining judicial activism

Apparently Justice Ginsburg was recently in South Africa heaping disrespect on the American Constitution. (What is it lately with American public figures going abroad to denigrate America? Think Al Gore here.) Anyway, as noted in this Power Line post about Justice Ginsburg she summarized her whole judicial philosophy this way:

To a large extent, I believe, the critics in Congress and in the media misperceive how and why U.S. courts refer to foreign and international court decisions. We refer to decisions rendered abroad, it bears repetition, not as controlling authorities, but for their indication, in Judge Wald's words, of "common denominators of basic fairness governing relationships between the governors and the governed."

John, at PowerLine, comes back with the perfect response:

This is, to put it politely, nonsense. In our system of government, the courts are not called on to determine what "basic fairness governing relationships between the governors and the governed" requires. For legal purposes, issues of "basic fairness" were decided when the Constitution was authored and approved by the initial thirteen states, and when the document has been amended over the subsequent centuries. The real issue here is: what is the Constitution? Justice Scalia has famously noted that the Constitution is a legal document which, like all legal documents, says some things and does not say others. In Justice Ginsburg's view the Constitution is, on the contrary, a roving charter for nine individuals to decide what "basic fairness" requires. It should hardly be necessary to point out that the former understanding, which was universal until quite recently, is a charter of freedom, inasmuch as the people's representatives can vote on amendments. Conversely, the "basic fairness" approach is a form of tyranny in which a small elite can impose its policy preferences on the rest of us. It is also utterly unworkable. There is a reason why people reduce legal documents to writing: it's the only way to know what the deal is. Under Justice Ginsburg's approach, the "law" is ineffable. There is no way to know from one day to the next what it might be.

We can only wait for the day when Justice Ginsburg decides that she'd rather lie in the sun in her backyard and catch a few "Z's", than slog off to the Court every day. And we can only hope that we reaches this conclusion in the next two years. UPDATE: If you want to know how judges who are not judicial activitists view their responsibilities on the bench, and if you want to understand why their viewpoint is more consistent with the role the Constitution plays in America, read this article. Talking to Technorati: Ginsburg, Judicial activism