Friday, October 21, 2005

On judicial restraint

A state court trial judge writes here in the New York Times: "A week doesn't go by when I am not forced by the law to do something that I would rather not do if I were, say, a philosopher-king unencumbered by the legislation of mere mortals."

He concludes: "We need more judges, at all levels, who are not frustrated policymakers, who won't strain to find ambiguity in unambiguous words because they want to 'do good,' and who won't hesitate to go where their own principled application of the law takes them, even if (and especially if) it is a result they would not freely choose."

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