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OPINION

The Supreme Court’s Job Is to Protect Americans from Democracy

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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I have to give the Washington Post credit. It may have a bias for statism, but at least they have some diversity on the op-ed pages. Less than two months after E.J. Dionne wrote an embarrassing column showing he didn’t understand the difference between untrammeled majoritarianism and a constitutional republic, the Post publishes a terrific piece by George Will on the proper role of the Supreme Court.

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Here’s some of what George Will wrote.

…a vast portion of life should be exempt from control by majorities. And when the political branches do not respect a capacious zone of private sovereignty, courts should police the zone’s borders. Otherwise, individuals’ self-governance of themselves is sacrificed to self-government understood merely as a prerogative of majorities.

The Constitution is a companion of the Declaration of Independence and should be construed as an implementation of the Declaration’s premises, which include: Government exists not to confer rights but to “secure” preexisting rights; the fundamental rights concern the liberty of individuals, not the prerogatives of the collectivity — least of all when it acts to the detriment of individual liberty. Wilkinson cites Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes as a practitioner of admirable judicial modesty. But restraint needs a limiting principle, lest it become abdication.

Holmes said: “If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It’s my job.”

No, a judge’s job is to judge, which includes deciding whether majorities are misbehaving at the expense of individual liberty. …The Constitution is a document, one understood — as America’s greatest jurist, John Marshall, said — “chiefly from its words.” And those words are to be construed in the bright light cast by the Declaration. Wilkinson worries about judges causing “an ever-increasing displacement of democracy.” Also worrisome, however, is the displacement of liberty by democracy in the form of majorities indifferent or hostile to what the Declaration decrees — a spacious sphere of individual sovereignty.

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I offered my two cents on this issue, rhetorically asking why the Founding Fathers would have bothered listing enumerated powers if the interstate commerce clause was designed to be a blank check for politicians in Washington.

But Thomas Sowell, as usual, wrote about the issue with greater eloquence and clarity.

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