"In short, whatever hypothetical tyranny "change" might exercise over reluctant judges in hypothetical cases—in the real world, the real cases which have caused concern and controversy over judicial activism have seldom been of this nature. Social change created no cognitive difficulties in determining Brian Weber's race or that of his fellow employees, or made the language of Sections 703(a) or 703(d) of the Civil Rights Act shrouded in ambiguity defying all attempts to discern what Congress could possibly have meant. The changing technology of abortions raised neither administrative nor other barriers to the feasibility of its being either legal or illegal. Nor were any of the eighteenth-century methods of execution, which escaped the "cruel and unusual" prohibition of the Constitution at the time, lost as options through "change" in the intervening generations. In short, feasibility is not the central issue. What has changed most profoundly is what people, including judges, wish to do.
The proposition that publicly desired changes are thwarted for lack of institutional instruments, so that judges are the public's last resort, not only flies in the face of this evidence but is also inconsistent with the courts' plummeting prestige as they putatively carried out the public's otherwise thwarted desires for change. Not all advocates of judicial activism take on the formidable task of claiming that the public wants the changes imposed by judges. Some admit to speaking for a much narrower constituency among their contemporaries, however much they may anticipate vindication from later and presumably more enlightened generations. Justice Thurgood Marshall has made the test what the public would believe if properly informed.[71]
In principle, the fundamental justification for judicial activism is that what is imposed is morally preferable to what exists—or what the public wants. In Ronald Dworkin's words, "a more equal society is a better society even if its citizens prefer inequality."[72] This puts the issue at its clearest. What remains is to determine why judges are the proper instruments of changes counter to public desires and unauthorized by the source of their authority. The pragmatic answer is that they are appointed rather than elected and, with federal judges, appointed for life. Even so, different kinds of institutions have their own advantages and disadvantages,[73] so that even intellectually or morally superior individuals in a particular kind of institution need not make more socially beneficial decisions when over-riding the decisions of other institutions which have social advantages in the particular matters within their respective purviews. "
http://www.amatecon.com/etext/jar/jar.html
Brown vs. Board comes to mind as a big acomplishment for judical activism, but then again you neocons don't much like african-americans getting schooling.
/see we can all flamebait/troll so how about you stop too Utswo.