Liberty's Safety Net

Abstract

I am honored and humbled by the breadth and depth of the responses to my essay on judicial activism, including Richard Epstein's very generous introduction. Each of the contributors has packed a tremendous amount of insight and information into an impossibly limited number of words, and the comments will be extremely useful as I go forward with the project of turning the original essay into a book. My essay might be characterized as a rhetorical call to arms, an undifferentiated embrace of judicial activism. Three of the commentators provide very helpful substantive support for the call to arms, and two others off er refinements that call into question the lack of differentiation. I consider all five to be friendly amendments to my motion for increased judicial activism, and will therefore consider them relatively briefly.