Center for Judicial Engagement

	Download: Government Unchecked

The courts were meant to be an integral part of keeping legislators and executive branch officials within the proper bounds of their authority.  But as the Institute for Justice has seen too often, judges are either unwilling or feel unable to enforce constitutional limits on the size and scope of government power.

Changing that is the mission of IJ’s Center for Judicial Engagement.  The Constitution was designed to be a bulwark of liberty against overreaching government, but it can only serve that vital function when judges actually enforce it.  Increasingly, however, courts are inclined to disregard constitutional limits on government power under the rubric of judicial minimalism or restraint, when often a more accurate term would be “judicial abdication.”  That must change.  The Center for Judicial Engagement will cut through unhelpful rhetoric about supposed judicial activism and simply ask whether judges are properly engaged in their role of interpreting and applying the Constitution.  

Simply put, Americans need judges who will judge.  By changing the way we think about and talk about the role of judges in our system of government, the Center for Judicial Engagement seeks to restore the Constitution and our courts to their proper role:  limiting government, not rationalizing its heedless expansion at the whim of politicians.

For more on the Center’s animating principles, see its Declaration.

Also, please see the Center’s empirical studies and legal scholarship about the need for judicial engagement and the too-often devastating effects of judicial abdication.

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