Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said Wednesday that she has grown weary of partisan attacks on judges, criticisms that she believes are causing citizens to lose faith in the judicial system.

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O'Connor, 77, said she finds troubling the "increased number of attack on judges that are coming out of the halls of Congress and out of state legislatures across the country." Single-issue advocacy groups are tagging judges with labels such as "activist judges" or "godless, secular humanists" to win passage of propositions or amendments to state constitutions, she said.

"The founders of our country did not intend that Congress or the legislative branch dictate results in specific cases," O'Connor said. "I think we're hearing more criticisms about judges than I've heard in my very long lifetime."

(H/t How Appealing)

Of course, the venerable Justice ignores the fact that some of the harshest criticisms of the judiciary come in the form of dissenting opinions from fellow judges. But she seems to be most concerned that our elected representatives in Congress or state legislatures dare share the sentiments of those dissenting opinions. And of course, she sets up a straw man because those “propositions or amendments to state constitutions” she decries went down in flames in last November’s elections. (And don’t think that it is the conservatives who want judicial nominees to state in advance the kinds of decisions they will render in specific cases; just ask Ted Kennedy.)

As a rebuttal to Justice O’Connor, a few observations about the role of the judiciary are in order. For these, you may thank Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 78):

Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them. The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.

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It can be of no weight to say that the courts, on the pretense of a repugnancy, may substitute their own pleasure to the constitutional intentions of the legislature. This might as well happen in the case of two contradictory statutes; or it might as well happen in every adjudication upon any single statute. The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise WILL instead of JUDGMENT, the consequence would equally be the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body. The observation, if it prove any thing, would prove that there ought to be no judges distinct from that body.

When judges substitute their will for that of the people or the people’s elected representatives in the Legislative or Executive branches, they justly deserve the verbal attacks propounded to them by their critics. They deserve the condescension, the criticism, and the dissent of the public. So long as those “attacks” that Justice O’Connor decries are mere philosophical criticisms (as opposed to physical – and criminal – assaults), they are the legitimate expression of dissent by a people who long ago threw off the shackles of oligarchy. Justice O’Connor and other judicial elites just don’t get it.