ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on three criticisms of judicial activism on behalf of minorities that have become particularly popular among American elite opinion-shapers, academics, and journalists: the balkanization, democratic, and competence criticisms. Some offering these critiques are proudly conservative or neoconservative. The chapter argues for the transformation of five counterproductive features of the remedial approaches that have predominated in race (and gender) judicial decisions, in the academic literature calling for decisions favorable to minorities, and in the more general statements of contemporary liberal political theory on which they have drawn. These counterproductive features are reliance on fuzzy claims of moral equality; an undue focus on moral motivations; advocacy of symbolic, restorationist remedies; depiction of the constitutional system as a neutral umpire of disputes; and excessive investment in judicial solutions to the problems progressives must address. The chapter focuses on the federal judiciary and modern liberalism in relation to civil rights for African Americans.
