What Judges Do

As the next Supreme Court nomination fight approaches, this succinct truth is something that few people, other than lawyers, know about the law:


For 30 years, conservative commentators have persuaded the public that conservative judges apply the law, whereas liberal judges make up the law. According to Chief Justice John Roberts, his job is just to "call balls and strikes." According to Justice Antonin Scalia, conservative jurists merely carry out the "original meaning" of the framers. These are appealing but wholly disingenuous descriptions of what judges -liberal or conservative - actually do.
GEOFFREY R. STONE
NY Times, April 13, 2010

Geoffrey R. Stone, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, is an editor of The Supreme Court Review.

For further reading, see The Politics of Law, though the above quote pretty much says it all.