The Most Activist Supreme Court in History: The Road to Modern
Judicial Conservatism. By Thomas M. Keck. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2004. 370p. $65.00 cloth, $24.00 paper.
The title of this work presents its thesis at the macrolevel, but it
is with limited support that the author claims that the current Supreme
Court is the “most activist.” The core argument of the book is
actually presented in the last chapter in clear fashion. There, the author
explicitly refers to the Court as the O'Connor Court since he
determines that it is largely the blend of political conservatism and
judicial moderation, long displayed by Sandra Day O'Connor, that
encapsulates the modern Court. So the thesis is no more than stated as
something of a straw man at the outset. Thomas Keck “reveals”
that the political ideology (liberal/conservative) dimension of
justices is not identical to the judicial activism/restraint dimension
of their judicial perspectives. These are and always have been two
separate dimensions, even if they may not be orthogonal. It is not clear
why this is the first major point of the discussion.