[highball]

I'd rather he rely on the Constitution. If he relies on his personal conscience to formulate judicial decisions, he's no different than a liberal judicial activist.

Exactly. Too often, we seem willing to embrace judicial activism so long as they're our judicial activists.

[MarcusTulliusCicero]

Yes.....the decisions need to be based on actual Constitutional interpretation, not personal opinion, be it liberal or conservative. Otherwise, to paraphrase Justice Scalia, we are ruled by the opinion of 9 lawyers....and why is their opinion to be held supreme if it is based only on personal belief rather than the Constitution?

[MarcusTulliusCicero]

It also depends on what you define as judicial activism. The Left tries to define activism as the overturning of any liberal judicial precedent. IMHO, the overturning of a precedent is activist only if it is done to suit a political agenda, either liberal or conservative. If the reason for overturning is that the decision conflicts with the Constitution, then it isn't activism. Most troubling in the testimony today is the reverence that Judge Roberts seems to give to stare decisis. He might do well to remember the quote from a letter of Thomas Jefferson to Monsieur A. Coray on Oct. 31, 1823.

“At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance.”