Out of Order: Arrogance, Corruption, and Incompetence on the Bench.

• Author: Rosenkranz, E. Joshua

Have you heard any good judge jokes lately. To Max Boot, the question is a metaphor for what's wrong with our system of justice. Sure, we yuck it up about lawyers going over cliffs in busloads and lying whenever their lips move. But no one jokes about judges. Why? Because we hold them in high esteem. Too high, for Boot's taste. So he aims to change that by exposing the "arrogance, corruption, and incompetence on the bench," to quote the subtitle of his new book. Boot, a Wall Street Journal op-ed editor, insists that judges, not lawyers or legislators, are responsible for almost every problem that afflicts our system of justice. Too many criminals at large? Judges are at fault. Too many frivolous suits filed? Blame judges. Jury awards shooting through the roof? Again, judges. And, of course, no indictment of judges is complete without the complaint that "activist" judges have flouted the democratic process.

The list of charges is not particularly fresh. Judges have long been preferred targets, especially for politicians. But the tone of Boot's book is illustrative of the recent escalation of vitriol and disintegration of accepted norms of conduct toward judges. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay demands the impeachment of any "activist" judge who issues a decision he dislikes. Ideologically driven senators throw the federal courts into crisis by refusing even to vote on qualified judicial nominees for years: And for every controversial judicial ruling, it seems, there is a politician prepared to introduce a bill to prevent any judge from ever ruling that way again.

This frenzy, which Boot fuels, presents a potentially devastating threat to the independence of the judiciary--and, hence, to our rights. This nation's founders understood a critical lesson of history: An independent judiciary is often all that stands in the way of tyranny. Not just tyranny of the despot, but tyranny of the majority. The framers of our Constitution understood that the majority is sometimes a bit too eager to sweep away our individual rights when convenient. They developed a Bill of Rights to protect each of us from the unbridled will of the public.

Judges have the sacred and daunting task of enforcing those rights-even when those rights compel unpopular results. Or, I should say, especially then. That is why we give federal judges life tenure and why we make it hard to remove judges. A judge who worries that an unpopular ruling will yield a pink slip is more likely to...