RAMESH PONNURU ON JUDICIAL REFORM: “One sometimes runs across conservatives who are hostile in principle to judicial review and want to abolish it. I’m not one of them, although I definitely understand the impulse. I do, however, want to strengthen constitutional checks on the power of the federal judiciary. For example, I’d like to see Congress exercise its power to regulate the courts’ jurisdiction. Most conservatives, and especially most conservative lawyers, have preferred to concentrate their efforts on getting “good judges” confirmed. They have had a variety of reasons for this preference. One of those reasons–not the most important reason, as it happens, but a reason–is that anything that tends to weaken the ability of the federal judiciary to invalidate laws would weaken its ability to invalidate laws that conservatives believe are unconstitutional.

“Liberals (and libertarians) may want the courts to strike down laws against abortion and pornography. Conservatives (and libertarians) want the Court to protect political speech, commercial speech, federalism, and executive-branch powers from laws that meddle with them. They want the Court to strike down racial preferences. They want it to invalidate state laws that they regard as violations of religious liberty (such as the Blaine amendments that prohibit government funding for religious schools).

“Whether conservatives are right to want all of these things is a question for another day. My point today is that in practice, conservatives don’t get many of them.”

more