On Wednesday, a small victory was scored in the fight for judicial restraint. Though Riegel v. Medtronic was not front-page news, the Court's decision is likely to have repercussions beyond the bounds of this particular case.
The case in question dealt with a healthcare patient who
sued the manufacturer of a burst catheter. The catheter had already been
approved by the FDA; however, the patient cited
The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against Riegel, declaring that Medtronic's products had already been given a clean bill of health by federal regulations; the FDA's approval superseded the state law in question.
While Justice Ginsburg, the lone dissenter, largely ignored the question of contradictory state and federal laws in favor of theorizing on what Congress must have meant, Scalia replied that it was "not [their] job to speculate on congressional motives."[i]
This represents the stark division between the two dominant schools of judicial thought: one sees law as a set of mostly coherent standards which provides a foundation for making law and crafting policy, while the other views the law as a tool for social justice.
While social justice sounds like a good goal, it should not be the goal of nine justices in black robes. It is Congress's role to make laws, and falls to the executive branch to execute those laws. The courts are to interpret existing laws and make sure they are consistent with the precepts of the Constitution. In other words, the Constitution, not the political motives and leanings of the justices, should guide the actions of the Court. The Bible guides our daily thoughts and actions, so should the Constitution serve as the Court's guidebook for legal matters.
The other problem with the "do-gooder" approach to Constitutional interpretation is that it carves out an ever-widening role for the Supreme Court; rather than claiming jurisdiction over cases that they believe could play an important role in clarifying existing case law, "social justice" is a rationale for the Court to intervene wherever they feel there is a wrong to be righted.
That kind of power, once in the hands of judges, is not easily checked. The unrestrained activism that springs from such wrongheaded thought is what led to the disastrous judicial overreach of Roe v. Wade; 7 justices believed that their first responsibility was to champion "reproductive freedom" rather than uphold existing federal law. Faced with the reality that there was no existing federal law on abortion at the time, the Court decided to right its own.
However, this recent decision by the Court is a step towards sanity, a voluntary limitation on its own power. The fact that an overwhelming majority of the Court backed the decision is heartening for advocates of judicial restraint. As we wait for further developments to come from the Court, we can only hope that this will prove to be precedent-setting.
