That's what Jonathan Adler says over at the Volokh Conspiracy regarding this hysterical column by E.J. Dionne.
Hysterical might not be a strong enough word to describe Dionne's piece. The only thing missing is a woman waving a coathanger and screaming that she "won't go back" to the bad ol' days.
Dionne seems to think that judicial restraint is a bad thing, at least when it butts up against his liberal ideas. As Adler states,
Dionne cites "the spate of 5 to 4 conservative decisions during the Supreme Court term just ended" as a signal that the conservative justices, when joined by Justice Kennedy, are willing "to overturn the will of Congress and local legislatures when doing so fits their political philosophy." Yes, Kennedy and the conservatives overturned D.C.'s handgun ban and a small portion of the McCain-Feingold law, but also among the end-of-term 5-4 decisions that overturned "the will of Congress and local legislatures" were the Court's decisions in Boumediene and Kennedy, which struck down Congressional policy on Gitmo detainees and state laws allowing capital punishment for child rape. Dionne also fails to mention the Roberts Court's demonstrated tendency to reject facial challenges to various legislative policies, ranging from voter ID and lethal injection to limits on soliciting child porn and the partial-birth abortion ban. While pretending to care about voter preferences, it appears Dionne is only concerned about judicial invalidation of legislative policies he favors. He's hardly alone in this, to be sure, but it belies his reputation as a thoughtful and insightful columnist.
This is, generally, the attitude of liberals towards the courts. They don't mind when the courts overturn the desires of the people--regarding, say, gay marriage or abortion--because it's just wrong for the majority to run everything. But that's exactly the argument Dionne wants to use in this instance. If a bill is popular, the court should rubberstamp it!
I realize that it is tough when the courts make up shit from the bench. Conservatives have had more than my lifetime watching liberals use a ouija board to determine what the Constitution says. But now it's time that we start reading the Constitution as it is written. If you want to change it, there's a process for that, too.
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