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By UK. HERMAN BELZ
Rappahannock News Contributing Writer
Editor’s Note: Judicial activism has been a recurrent issue in American politics. At present, activism is associated with the agenda of ideolog-ical liberalism, but that has not always been the case. Between 1890 and 1937, judicial activism was associated with business-oriented conservatism, thwarting the economic policies of the Progressive Era and the New Deal. Professor Belz argues that contemporary judicial activism is the unanticipated extension of the conservative activism of the preWorld War II years.
Recent debate about the possibility of original-intent jurisprudence raises anew the question of the role of the judiciary in American government and politics. It reflects the continuing tension in our constitutional order between judicial independence and democratic accountability. Historically judicial review has been a conservative institution justified chiefly by the need to maintain limitations on popular sovereignty. And although liberals may be reluctant to admit it, contemporary judicial activism stands in direct line of jurisprudential descent from the conservative activism of the Supreme Court in the period from 1890 to 1937 that attempted to curb the power of legislative majoritarianism.
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