Deep background on judicial power

This article talks about where the courts ought not to go, especially into areas of foreign policy, about which they may be ill-informed. It's worth a look.

The present expansion of judicial power began after World War II, when the Supreme Court found a new meteor in the vindication of individual rights and liberties. In a series of epic decisions, the Warren Court outlawed segregation, expanded free speech and the rights of criminal defendants, and created a right to privacy that is not found in the text of the Constitution. Some of these cases certainly were correctly decided—the Constitution's text, for example, never supported a rule of "separate but equal" segregation. However, the courts quickly moved beyond saying what the law is, in the Marbury court's phrase, to devising elaborate enforcement schemes that brought judges, among other things, into the business of supervising school districts and effectively determining how federal and state prisons must be designed. More...