Textbook Proponency of Judicial Activism

It looks like many in positions of influence are still unconvinced that legislators are better at making public policy decisions than judges. Their answer to almost every problem is intervention by distant authorities into matters meant to be handled by more local, democratically elected officials.

Here's the 4,672nd example: an elected school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, has mandated that intelligent design be taught in science courses. A small group of parents has enlisted the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State to overturn their decision, their decision being a vote of elected officials after a public debate. The case is before a US District Court judge, John E. Jones, appointed by President Bush in 2002.

Liberals will contend that this case should determine if 'intelligent design' should be taught in schools (see NYT coverage). More principled and thoughtful viewers will see that the *real* outcome of the case will be whether judges are able to set the curriculum in public schools.

I won't cry if citizens elect a different school board that votes out intelligent design. But I think we should all be pissed if some unelected, life-tenured official tells all the voters in Dover that he knows better than them in every minutia of daily life. Watch this case with interest.

Background

UPDATE:
I found a quote from a Clinton DOJ, Dawn Johnson, official explaining the goals of a Republican program to remove activists from the judiciary:
"If you take this one path [appointing judicial conservatives] it leads to heaven. And then there's this other path." That path, she says, led to a world in which courts barred police from questioning suspects but forced taxpayers to fund abortions, where incest, prostitution and "sexual relations among children" were constitutional rights and judges imposed taxes, wrote school curriculums and prescribed treatment for mental patients.