Arizona Public Media reports that:
Goldwater Institute lawyer Clint Bolick was named to the Arizona Supreme Court Wednesday by Gov. Doug Ducey.
Bolick’s … served for the last nine years as the Goldwater Institute’s vice president for constitutional litigation. Previously, Bolick co-founded the Institute for Justice and served as president of the Alliance for School Choice.
“Clint is nationally renowned and respected as a constitutional law scholar and as a champion of liberty,” Ducey was quoted as saying in a press release from his office. “He brings extensive experience and expertise, an unwavering regard for the rule of law and a firm commitment to the state and citizens of Arizona.”
Bolick, on behalf of Goldwater, has won several cases challenging state laws across the nation and local governmental ordinances, including one that led to striking down of a Tucson ordinance giving preference to local businesses in awarding city contracts.
He also has been involved in litigation to uphold school voucher laws in Arizona and elsewhere and in a challenge to the city of Phoenix’s practice of allowing paid “release time” for city employees to conduct union business.
At the Washington Post, Jonathan Adler provides some additional biographical details:
Before co-founding IJ, Bolick had worked at the Landmark Legal Foundation, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Justice Department. He is also the author of several books, including “Unfinished Business: A Civil Rights Strategy for America’s Third Century,” “David’s Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary,” and, most recently, “Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution” (co-authored with Jeb Bush).
As his record makes clear, Bolick is not an advocate of “judicial restraint” or minimalism. In the constellation of right-leaning legal stars, Bolick is much closer to Randy Barnett than to Robert Bork. (He also, incidentally, was close with Justice Clarence Thomas — with whom he worked at the EEOC — and was an outspoken proponent of his confirmation.)
Bolick’s appointment is good news for the citizens of Arizona, and — as an example of what may be a postive trend — it’s good news for Americans in general.
Years ago the US Supreme Court decided to abdicate its responsibility for protecting citizens’ rights and preserving limited, constitutional government. Ever since, in most cases, it has simply deferred to the will of Congress and the state legislatures, and most state supreme courts have followed it’s example and adopted a similarly deferrential standard of review. In a blog post that appeared earlier this year, however, I described a case in which the Texas Supreme Court determined that under the Texas Constitution it had the power and the duty to apply a higher level of scrutiny than the one adopted by the US Supreme Court. Clint’s appointment to the Arizona Supreme Court suggests this heighened sense of duty may be starting to spread. Let’s hope so.