Injudicious comments.(THE COURTS)

IN their efforts to confine the power of the federal judiciary to its proper constitutional dimensions, conservatives face two foes more tenacious and powerful than Patrick Leahy or Harry Reid. Those foes are, first, a legal culture that celebrates judicial activism or, worse, assumes its inevitability; and second, a political culture that regards the rule of judges as the rule of law.

Confirming judges committed to applying the law rather than making it would begin to rectify the first problem. Solving the second, deeper problem requires that our political class challenge the courts' self-proclaimed monopoly on constitutional interpretation. That monopoly means that judges can effectively define the limits of their own power. As a result, their interpretations come to supplant the Constitution itself. The most promising line of attack on judicial supremacy is for Congress to use its constitutional power to limit the courts' jurisdiction. But judicial supremacy has become so ingrained over the last two generations that any course of action will be dauntingly difficult.

That's why conservatives ought to think carefully about what they're up against when they are tempted to make incautious comments about reining in the judiciary. Too many politicians and organizations on the right are being reckless at the moment. After federal judges refused to order Terri Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted, House Republican leader Tom DeLay said, "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." Asked whether the judges should be impeached, he said, "There's plenty of time to look into that." Then John Cornyn speculated on the Senate floor that recent violence against judges may have been a reaction, though certainly an unjustified one, to judicial activism. The Family Research Council decided to hold an event dedicated to breaking the filibuster against "people of faith and moral conviction."

DeLay and Cornyn have backtracked from their remarks, and other Republicans have distanced themselves from them. Sen. Bill Frist is under pressure not to attend the Family Research Council event. President Bush and Vice President Cheney have felt it necessary to declare their allegiance to "judicial independence."

These incidents have done some damage to the conservative campaign on the ...