August 30, 2011 12:25PM # How Judges Protect Liberty By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE In my [*Encyclopedia Britannica* column](http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2011/08/judges-rule-law/) this week, I take a look at “the responsibility of judges to strike down laws, regulations, and executive and legislative actions that exceed the authorized powers of government, violate individual rights, or fail to adhere to the rules of due process.” Certainly they don’t always live up to those expectations, as Robert A. Levy and William Mellor wrote in *[The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom](http://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Dozen-Radically-Expanded-Government/dp/1595230505).* The column might have been more timely last summer, when Judge Andrew Napolitano concluded one of his *Freedom Watch* programs on the Fox Business Channel by hailing four federal judges who had courageously and correctly struck down state and federal laws: - Judge Martin L. C. Feldman, who [blocked](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/us/23drill.html) President Obama’s moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico; - Judge Susan Bolton, who [blocked](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/us/29arizona.html) Arizona’s restrictive immigration law; - Judge Henry Hudson, who [refused](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/02/AR2010080205019.html) to dismiss Virginia’s challenge to the health care mandate; and - Judge Vaughn Walker, who [struck down](http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/04/local/la-mew-prop-8-10042010) California’s Proposition 8 banning gay marriage. That was a good summer for judicial protection of liberty. But [as I note](http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2011/08/judges-rule-law/), there have been more examples this year, reminding us of James Madison’s predictions that independent judges would be “an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.” ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).