Why Judicial Restraint Is Now Seen as Judicial Activism

Last week, the Supreme Court scuttled the Biden administration’s attempt to forgive more than $400 billion in student loan debt. 

As a matter of policy, broad-based student debt cancellation remains a terrible idea for a host of reasons. 

While targeting relatively small debts held by lower-income community college graduates is more defensible, sweeping student debt forgiveness is regressive, rewarding people with an asset—a college or graduate degree—who are better equipped to pay it off than other debt-burdened Americans.

At a time when the government is still fighting inflation, it was “reckless”—in the words of Obama administration chief economist Jason Furman—to pump billions into the economy.