The drone from the right wing buzz machine has become so incessant that it's almost become easy to tune it out. A quick Google search for the terms "activist judge" and "liberal judge" yields hundreds of thousands of hits. The lines that at one point were provocative have become so de rigeur in modern political discourse that it's become easy for liberals to dismiss conservative claims of judicial activism as the rantings of a select minority who didn't pay attention in civics class and doesn't understand the nature of checks and balances built into the constitution by its founders. But that hasn't stopped multiple states from proposing laws that will be decided in a few weeks that will effectively gut the independence of the judiciary in favor of a pseudo-populist majoritarian rule system that would allow those judges who make decisions citizens disagree with to become personally liable.

What proponents of these types of "reforms" don't understand is that the people already have the power. Two branches of government are democratically elected at both the state and federal levels. Federal judges are only appointed subject to an approval process that depends on the consent of elected representatives. And many state judges have to actually run for election. The people are amply represented at each stage in the process, but the drafters of the constitution intentionally left judges immune (for the most part) from the fickle whims of the electorate because their job often puts them in a position of prominence, and judicial rulings have often paved the way for social reforms that most Americans now take for granted (remember segregation in schools?) But popular anger has chosen judges as its target, possibly to deflect criticism from the failings of elected representatives (at their direction) and those looking to change the system could care less about the consequences.

Dick Lamm sums it up pretty succintly. The distancing of judges from much of the political process gives them a freedom not often found in government officials, who typically have to worry about how their every move will reflect on their next reelection campaign. Like that horrendous Supreme Court decision allowing municipalities to claim eminent domain to give property to private corporations for development purposes, where the dissenting opinions were written by none other than Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist and O'Connor. If these judges had to face personal retribution for those decisions there's no telling how they would have voted, and the same goes for virtually every case of note in US history.

While judges may be an easy target for public anger, declawing a branch of the government that has as one of its major responsibility the reining in of power from the other two branches is a bad choice. Hopefully the voters will agree in November.