How did judicial restraint affect the power of legislatures and executives?

Judicial restraint is a doctrine that encourages judges to limit the exercise of their power of judicial review by deferring to the decisions of elected officials. By presuming the constitutionality of government actions and intervening only when a violation is clear, this approach grants the legislature and executive greater freedom to formulate and implement policy.1

As a proponent of this philosophy, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. maintained that the creation of laws is the responsibility of legislative bodies rather than the courts. He believed that, provided they remain within constitutional bounds, the people possess the right to enact whatever laws they choose through their representatives, regardless of whether those laws are considered good or bad.2

Ultimately, judicial restraint is grounded in the principle that in a democracy, elected officials should play the primary role in policymaking. When courts are insufficiently deferential, they risk usurping that role and constraining democratic self-governance. However, this approach also carries the ethical risk that a restrained court may fail to protect fundamental rights, particularly those of minorities, as seen in historically criticized decisions like Plessy v. Ferguson.1