Court Activism Revisited

I just finished Richard Epstein's short work How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution.

Mr. Epstein views recent Judicial Activism from a classical liberal perspective and finds the various twists of modern liberals (Progressives) lacking. Progressive courts have changed the focus of legal interpretation from one that sought to protect the rights of individuals to control their labor and property to one that allows arbitrary power graps by political insiders who claim themselves champions of "social progress."

Historically, most of these social progress schemes have failed to deliver social progress. They generally do little more than make the people with political power rich and more powerful.

Anyway, I found this "Classical Liberal" critique of Progressive Court Activism a refreshing break from the ideology driven Conservative and Libertarian critiques of the modern progressive courts. Epstein does not hold the argument that we have to return to some perfected bygone past. Instead the work shows the muddle that has bubbled out of the Progressive Activists courts for what it is. The end result of the Progressive movement is to concentrate power in the hands of the politically powerful while alienating the mass of people they claim to represent.