“Judgifying I Don’t Like” Hack Watch

Whenever the courts strike down a law that discriminates against a group conservatives don’t like, every reactionary think and group blog must draw straws to see who gets to throw out the stale, transparently unprincipled cliches about judicial restraint. At the Heritage Foundation, the assignment apparently went to vote suppression guru Hans A. von Spakovsky, who delivers the goods:

As the Ninth Circuit writes, the question of how to define marriage “is currently a matter of great debate in our nation.” Unfortunately, instead of permitting that debate to occur through the political process, decisions like the one issued today remove the question from voters in favor of judicially imposed social policy.

Let’s leave aside the fact that judicial review is, in fact, a long-established part of the American political process. Given von Spakovsky’s deeply principled commitment to deferring to the judgment of legislators on contested constitutional questions, I wonder how he feels about the litigation attempting to get the signature policy achievement of the Obama administration ruled unconstitutional based on constitutional arguments nobody had thought of before 2010 (even when the same people were arguing for federal mandates to buy privatized annuities?) I think you know the answer!