June 29, 2012 10:27AM # John Roberts, Judicial Pacifist By [Ilya Shapiro](https://www.cato.org/people/ilya-shapiro) --- SHARE That’s the title of my [latest op-ed](http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20120629_John_Roberts__judicial_pacifist.html) on the ObamaCare ruling. Here’s an excerpt: > The Supreme Court’s health-care ruling displayed an unfortunate convergence of two unholy strains of constitutional jurisprudence: liberal activism and conservative pacifism. > > > Liberal activism, typified by the four Democratic-appointed justices, finds in the Constitution no judicially administrable limits on federal power. Conservative pacifism, a knee-jerk reaction to the liberal activism of the 1960s and ’70s, argues that we must defer to Congress as much as possible, presuming its legislation to be constitutional. > > > Neither approach considers that the Constitution’s structural provisions — federalism, separation and enumeration of powers, checks and balances — aren’t just a dry exercise in political theory, but a means to protect individual liberty against the concentrated power of popular majorities. Read [the whole thing](http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20120629_John_Roberts__judicial_pacifist.html). ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Health Care](https://www.cato.org/health-care), [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/).