The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board, in its Friday edition, ran a piece strongly decrying the Left’s and their Progressive-Democratic Party’s shrill attacks on Justice Sam Alito for his effrontery in decrying their attacks on freedom of speech and freedom of religion. In those personages’ eyes, Alito behaved despicably in two ways: defending those two freedoms, and any others, is far too political a thing for any mere Justice to do. And he did it in front of that dastardly bastion of individual liberty, the Federalist Society.

Then the editors deprecated their otherwise excellent piece with this, near the end of their editorial:

The American judiciary, in its best tradition, balances majoritarian demands with the constitutional rights of weaker and less politically powerful groups, whether they are socialist or conservative.

This is a very large misunderstanding. The American judiciary, in its best tradition—if only rarely honored—doesn’t balance anything. It acts on the text of the Constitution and the statute(s) before it in a case.

Any balancing is a political action legitimately carried out only by the political branches of our American government, the members of which are elected—and replaced—by our nation’s sovereign political aggregation, We the People.