Reagan Vows to Pick Judges Who Use ‘Restraint’

President Reagan, backing up Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III in his feud with the courts, vowed Monday to appoint federal judges who follow a pattern of “judicial restraint” and decried those who might attempt to use the courts as vehicles for “political action or social experimentation.”

Reagan joined Meese in challenging the Supreme Court over the intentions of the Founding Fathers when they established the judiciary’s role in the Constitution.

Speaking to a group of U.S. attorneys, Reagan said he intends to use the remainder of his second term to appoint people to the bench “who understand the danger of short-circuiting the electoral process and disenfranchising the people through judicial activism.

“I want judges of the highest intellectual standing who harbor the deepest regard for the Constitution and its traditions--one of which is judicial restraint,” he said.

Reagan said that the nation’s founders “never intended, for example, that the courts preempt legislative prerogatives or become vehicles for political action, or social experimentation, or for coercing the populace into adopting anyone’s personal view of Utopia.”