I do think the energy behind the blockade of the Garland nomination is fueled by anxiety not only about what a more liberal court might do but in equal measure by what a judicially restrained court would not do. The fear of judicial restraint runs deep. Ilya Shapiro, the Cato Institute scholar who blamed John Roberts for Donald Trump, expressed it vividly. Lamenting the failure of the attack on the Affordable Care Act, he wrote, seemingly without irony: “Constitutional conservatism simply couldn’t survive judicial conservatism.”



posted 2904 days ago