ABSTRACT
A modern democracy requires judges to settle disputes, but there is always the worry that judicial decision-makers will overreach themselves in carrying out this role. This is a much greater possibility in the common law world for, in this legal tradition, while judges often have no canonical texts to defer to and draw upon in making their decisions, they have to justify their decisions publicly, at length, and these justifications will themselves be treated as authoritative legal texts. Those who suspect judicial overreaching speak with suspicious hostility of 'activism'.
