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Every society, sociological research suggests, has its set of myths which incorporate and symbolize its political, economic, and social aspirations. Thus, as medieval society had the Quest for the Holy Grail and the cult of numerology, we, in our enlightened epoch, have as significant manifestations of our collective hopes the dream of impartial decision-making and the cult of "behavioral science." While in my view these latter two are but different facets of the same fundamental drive, namely, the age-old effort to exorcise human variables from human action, our concern here is with the first of them, the pervasive tendency in the American political and constitutional tradition directed towards taking the politics out of politics, and substituting some set of Platonic guardians for fallible politicians.

Justice Felix Frankfurter, dissenting in the Tennessee Reapportionment Case, characterized the holding of that decision as "a massive repudiation of the experience of our whole past." Whether or not this is true we may presently discover, but in the meanwhile Baker v. Carr may safely be described as a truly momentous constitutional decision. Without wishing to labor the obvious, legislative apportionment can be a violently partisan problem which, in the normal course of things, we might expect the Court to bend every effort to avoid. It is an area in which judicial standards are elusive and in which judicial remedies could be hard to apply and easy to avoid. The Court could have easily avoided the decision in Baker by adhering to a line of contrary precedents, but it chose instead to abandon an excellent defensive position in favor of a more active judicial role. I do not presume to pass on the wisdom of that choice, but more narrowly to inquire whether it was, in fact, the "massive repudiation" described by the venerable Justice. Time and space do not permit an examination of the whole doctrine of judicial self-restraint. This work is concerned more narrowly with that aspect of judicial self-restraint most germane to Baker v. Carr, the doctrine of "political questions."

Abstract
In its landmark decision in Obergefell v Hodges a five-Justice majority of the United States Supreme Court held that state laws depriving same-sex couples of the right to marry violate the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Four dissenting Justices - Chief Justice John G Roberts, Jr and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr - criticized the majority's ruling and analysis. Calling for judicial self-restraint and deference to the outcomes of democratic decision-making, the dissenters argued that same-sex marriage bans enacted by state legislatures did not violate the Constitution. This essay argues and demonstrates that the Obergefell dissenters have not restrained themselves in other cases in which they voted to strike down legislative enactments and did not defer to democratic decision-making. This selective restraint reveals that the dissenters have not been unwaveringly committed to judicial self-restraint, and raises the central question of when should the Court defer to legislatures in cases presenting constitutional challenges to state or federal laws.

Ronald Dworkin has shown that the doctrine of judicial self-restraint, although packaged as a defense of constitutional tradition, is grounded in a legalmoral skepticism that either inadvertently or covertly rejects the possibility of a genuinely normative constitution. The influence of Dworkin's argument challenges exponents of judicial self-restraint to show that their position is consistent with constitutionalist assumptions. This paper considers two attempts to meet that challenge. One defends restraint on epistemologieal grounds; the other on a substantive theory of natural rights. Together, these attempts constitute a comprehensive and systematic attempt to justify restraint within constitutionalist assumptions. Their failure indicates that the doctrine of restraint can form no part of a normative theory of the Constitution.

Every Court is the product of its time, reflecting predilections of fallible men in black robes. While wearing the magical habiliments of the law, Supreme Court justices take sides on controversial issues. From John Marshall to Warren Burger, the Court has been the guardian of some particular interest and the promoter of preferred values. Thus judicial activism, of whatever orientation, involves a paradox at the heart of constitutional orthodoxy—the Supreme Court considered as the mouthpiece of self-interpreting, self-enforcing law.

Cuando el juez constitucional impone mediante sus sentencias una determinada ideología, en perjuicio de las demás que se baten legítimamente en el juego democrático, no sólo ignora las diferencias esenciales entre Política y Derecho, sino que compromete las competencias del Parlamento y, en definitiva, la autonomía política de la sociedad. Frente a ello, la doctrina de la deferencia judicial nos recuerda las limitaciones de la jurisprudencia y doctrina constitucionales como herramientas de solución frente a los problemas políticos y la importancia de preservar la referida autonomía ; SI