For now, though, I just want to address a bad part that is getting most of the attention — as Kate’s post from yesterday indicates. That’s the business about issuing congressional subpoenas to federal judges to coerce them into explaining themselves before lawmakers. As many commentators have suggested, this proposal would violate separation-of-powers principles. The judiciary is a peer of the political branches. It would be no more appropriate for Congress to subpoena a federal judge (or that judge’s clerks) about the reasoning of one of the judge’s rulings than it would be for Congress to subpoena the president (or his top advisors) about a controversial decision that was within the president’s constitutional authority, or for a judge or the Justice Department to issue a subpoena to a member of Congress (or the lawmaker’s staff) to question that member about the deliberations over some legislative act that arguably went beyond Congress’s enumerated powers.

Put aside the constitutional problem, though. What I find most difficult to understand is the pointlessness — of both the proposal that judges be forced to explain themselves and the offense taken at the proposal.

In cases involving important questions of constitutional law, judges always explain their reasoning.