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Grantee Spokesman Criticizes Bush's Allegations of "Activist Judges"
On February 25, the Washington Post ran an op-ed by Georgetown Law Professor Peter Edelman on behalf of Justice at Stake (JAS), a nonpartisan organization that promotes judicial independence and a U.S. Justice Fund grantee. In the piece, Edelman cites President Bush’s condemnation of “activist judges” in calling for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Edelman goes on to say that the term has become “a cliché—a scare phrase for either side to hurl at the other in place of substantive argument that a particular judicial decision is wrong on its merits.” The piece recalls Judge Alfred Goodwin’s “trenchant remark: ‘if the court makes a decision someone likes … it’s ‘judicial statesmanship.’ If not, it’s called ‘judicial activism.’” Following the piece, Wisconsin Public Radio conducted and aired two interviews with JAS on February 26.
