In response to the GOP’s repeated accusations of Elena Kagan’s so-called judicial activism, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) fired back with a quote from Justice John Paul Stevens’ sharp dissent in Citizens United: “Essentially, five Justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.”

As Senator Durbin pointedly noted, the Court’s reversal of decades of precedent was “espoused by men who swore they would never engage in judicial activism” – men like Chief Justice John Roberts, who during his own confirmation hearings spoke about how judges are like umpires because they “don’t make the rules, they apply them” and must have “the humility to recognize that they operate within a system of precedent”…and then went on to author the majority opinion in Citizens United. “If that isn’t judicial activism,” said Durbin, “then I don’t know what is.”

And as for the “well-known activist judges” with whom Ms. Kagan has been “associating”, Sen. Durbin spoke out against Republicans’ criticism that Kagan might be a judge in the mold of Thurgood Marshall, for whom she clerked. He instead praised the former justice, citing his critical role in successfully arguing the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, and saying that Marshall had changed America for the better. “If that is an activist mind at work, we should be grateful as a nation.”