One of the reasons many voters feared Democrat control of our government, perhaps the main reason for some, was that Democrats would be virtually certain to nominate and appoint judges and Supreme Court justices whose view of jurisprudence blurred the difference between judging and legislating. Those on the left side of the spectrum, which is the ideological home for all of the leading Democrats in Washington, tend to see the courts as vehicles for implementing social policy rather than as institutions for determining whether particular cases violate or conform to the law and the Constitution.
What the law actually says is, for the Left, only of secondary importance to what those who adjudicate would like it to say. The Left uses this power to circumvent the legislature, which represents the will of the people, and prefers the expedient of imposing its will on the rest of us through judicial fiat. This is a usurpation of democracy, as the late Richard John Neuhaus famously put it, and it deprives citizens of their right to make law through their elected representatives.
Comes word now that Justice David Souter is retiring from the court and that President Obama will have the opportunity to display the sort of judicial philosophy he will lay upon the nation by his nomination for a replacement. There's little reason to think that his nominee will be someone who seeks to interpret the Constitution in light of what it actually says and every reason to believe he will pick a candidate who is guided more by ideological fashion than Constitutional rigor.
The good news is that such a selection will not change the complexion of the Court since Souter was just such a justice himself. Indeed, the most likely candidates for the next round of retirements (Justices Stevens (89) and Ginsberg (76 and recovering from cancer)) are also very liberal, so unless there's a surprise and Scalia, Thomas, Roberts or Alito choose to leave the bench, none of Obama's appointments to the Supreme Court are likely to change things much.
The bad news, though, is that Souter will doubtless be replaced by a younger version of himself which means that Souter's judicial philosophy will be with us for many years to come.
Beyond that, real damage (or benefit, depending on your point of view) is most likely to occur on the federal bench where a slew of appointments of very liberal judges could have ramifications that ripple through our society for decades. This is the sort of change that candidate Obama promised and the sort of change most of his supporters voted for, but I don't think it's the sort of cvhange we need.
RLC