Professor Nagel's article, ?Conservative Judicial Activism" is published in The Weekly Standard

Colorado Law Professor Robert Nagel was published in the February issue of The Weekly Standard, which was highlighted in today’s Wall Street Journal (in their new column, “The Informed Reader"). Professor Nagel’s article, “Conservative Judicial Activism? Inventing a constitutional right to ‘medical self-defense’.”

Nagel states:

Creative but justifiable conservative activism is an important possibility, embraced by a number of able lawyers and scholars. It deserves careful consideration.

This is how lawyers have come to dominate moral debate in the United States. They elevate their preferences to constitutional rights and then claim that profound moral beliefs held by others are inadequate to justify restrictions on the newly created rights. You see, rights cannot be abridged except for highly convincing reasons, and judges (enlightened by the arguments of litigators and law professors) will decide what is convincing.

Creating a constitutional right to medical self-defense would be a definitive sign that the conservatives who sit on the Supreme Court are not serious about establishing a saner, less imperial role for the judiciary--indeed, that just about nobody in the legal profession is. This would be further evidence, if more is needed, that if non-lawyers want to retake control over public decision-making, they should not expect much help from members of the profession whose inordinate power is based on the modern conventions of constitutional argument.