How Courts Failed the Constitution: Clark Neily on “Terms of Engagement”

How Courts Failed the Constitution: Clark Neily on
“Terms of Engagement,” produced by Zach Weissmueller. Approximately
9 minutes. 

Original release date was February 5, 2014 and original writeup
is below.

“The judge will actually collaborate with the
government in coming up with hypothetical justifications for a law
in order to bend over backwards and uphold whatever the government
is doing,” says Clark Neily, attorney at the Institute for Justice and author of
the new book, Terms
of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s
Promise of Limited Government. ”You don’t get a neutral
arbiter.”

Neily sat down with Reason TV’s Zach Weissmueller to discuss what
Neily describes as an ongoing pattern of “judicial abdication” in
America.The judiciary, he says, was meant to stand as a bulwark
against the tyranny of the majority, a defender of individual
rights. Instead, it has become a mere enabler of legislators and
government agencies. Neily argues that charges of “judicial
activism” are overblown in a time when what’s needed is greater
“judicial engagement,” or, a real grappling with the meaning of the
Constitution and its application as a check on government
power.