What makes an activist judge?
This came up in the Times a couple months ago but seems worth revisiting today. If being an activist judge, "legislating from the bench", as everyone likes to call it these days, means voting to overturn congressional legislation, then the top 5 activist judges on the Supreme Court since 1994 were: Thomas, Kennedy, Scalia, Rehnquist, O'Connor. The 4 "liberal" justices? At the bottom of the list.

So can we please get rid of the ridiculous idea that "conservative" judge is the opposite of an "activist" judge? Clarence Thomas has voted to overturn congressional legislation more than twice as often as Steven Breyer. (Via Washington Monthly)