Welcome, this is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, April 4th. I'm Anastasia Glova, your host.

At yesterday's forum, Clint Bolick presented his new book, David's Hammer, the case for an activist judiciary published by the Cato Institute.

Clint is the director of Goldwater Institute's Center for Constitutional Litigation and co-founder

of the Institute for Justice.

Today I speak with him about his unconventional views on what many people pajoratively dismiss as legislating from the bench.

First let's address how you define judicial activism, especially as opposed to judicial review.

Judicial activism is the act of the court's striking down laws that are perceived to be unconstitutional.

And thus defined, it's neither a negative or a positive term,

but I think that there's not nearly enough judicial activism

defined in that fashion. Now for the theme of your book, you argue that fashion.

Now for the theme of your book, you argue that judicial activism is a role the court exercises

not too much, but far too little as opposed to conventional wisdom.

Why do you say that? I believe that courts need to be far

more active in striking down laws because government is proliferating like crazy at

every level both executive and legislative and our rights are

falling by the wayside oftentimes by unelected government officials who are

regulating everything about our lives from schools to property to taxes and so forth.

And the judiciary is the only branch of government that is capable of standing up for the

rights of the individual against the rights of

special interests and the powers of government. But look at just two cases

plus E. V. Ferguson and the Kormatu case that had to do with Japanese interment during World War II.

Wouldn't you agree that in these two cases the court acted in an unacceptably activist way?

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