E.J. Dionne: The looming fight over conservative judicial activism

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WASHINGTON — The genius of American conservatives over the last 30 years has been their understanding that the most effective way to change the country is to change the terms of our political debate. On issue after issue, they have done just that.

Sensible regulation was cast as a dangerous quest for government control. Modest measures to alleviate poverty became schemes to lock the poor into "dependency." Advocates of social insurance were condemned as socialists. Government was said to be under the sway of a distant "them," even though in a democracy, government is the realm of "us." And attempts to achieve a bit more economic equality were pronounced as assaults on liberty.

Nowhere has the conservative intellectual offensive been more effective than in transforming our discussion of the judiciary, and that is why the coming clash over President Obama's next Supreme Court nominee is so important.

The test of success for liberals should not simply be winning the confirmation battle. This fight must be the beginning of a long-term effort to expose how radically conservatives have altered our understanding of what the Supreme Court does and how it does it.

Above all, it should become clear that the danger of judicial activism now comes from the right, not the left. It is conservatives, not liberals, who are using the courts to overturn the decisions made by democratically elected bodies in areas ranging from pay discrimination and school integration to antitrust laws and worker safety regulation.

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