Welcome to Econ Talk brought to you by the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host, Russ Roberts of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

My guest today is Clint Bollock, president of the Alliance for School Choice.

Clint co-founded the Institute for Justice, a Washington DC-based Libertarian public interest law firm.

He's also a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Clint has been involved in some of the most important Supreme Court decisions of the last decade.

His books include voucher wars, waging the legal battle over school choice, and Leviathan, the growth of local government, and the erosion of liberty.

His newest book, David's Hammer, the case for an activist judiciary will be published in early 2007 by the Cato Institute.

Clint, thanks for joining us.

It's a pleasure to be with you.

Now, by defending judicial activism in this new book, David's Hammer, you've accomplished that rare feat of alienating scholars on the left and the right.

What are they worried about, and why are they wrong?

Well, of course, any time you see the left and the right getting together on something, it's important to hold on to your wallet.

But certainly judicial activism is a universal pejorative today. No one supports judicial activism.

So why do I? First of all, it's important to define what I mean by judicial activism.

What I mean by judicial activism is a court that is willing to stand up against majoritarian tyranny and uphold the rights of the individual.

And what I don't mean by judicial activism is courts engaging in judicial legislation or taking on the powers of the executive branch.

I refer to that as judicial lawlessness, and it's a bad thing.

But an active judiciary in defense of individual liberty is vital to the preservation of a free society.

And that position is associated with some on the so-called right, particularly some of those on the court, but in practice, the people on the right worried about judicial activism won a different perspective than yours.

How would they describe it? I'm not as eloquent as you are on that. Tell me about that. They phrase that.

Most people on the right, and I would certainly include myself in this camp, would argue that they are advocates of original intent, that the Constitution ought to be enforced as originally written and as originally intended.

...