Will on Judicial Activism

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From the article:


Conservatives’ advocacy of judicial restraint serves liberalism by leaving government’s growth unrestrained. This leaves people such as Sandy Meadows at the mercy of government acting as protector of the strong.

Meadows was a Baton Rouge widow who had little education and no resources but was skillful at creating flower arrangements, which a grocery store hired her to do. Then Louisiana’s Horticulture Commission pounced.

It threatened to close the store as punishment for hiring an unlicensed flower arranger. Meadows failed to get a license, which required a written test and the making of four flower arrangements in four hours, arrangements judged by licensed florists functioning as gatekeepers to their own profession, restricting the entry of competitors. Meadows, denied reentry into the profession from which the government had expelled her, died in poverty, but Louisianans were protected by their government from the menace of unlicensed flower arrangers.


Source: George F. Will, “Judicial Activism Isn’t A Bad Thing,” The Washington Post, January 22, 2014