The Majority Get What it Wants

Ann Althouse claims that yesterday’s civil unions ruling by the Supreme Court of New Jersey is an example of “judges who get out in front of what the majority wants.” The problem is that the court was doing what the majority wants. (This is what one may call the Robert Bork fallacy: if I disagree with what the courts are doing, then they must be countermajoritarian.) As with abortion, it was legislators who were behind the public. This doesn’t, in and of itself, make the decision right, but if there’s a problem with what the court did, it’s not that it’s going against the will of a majority of the citizens of New Jersey.