Court Costs
To the Editor:
Clearly, Donald L. Horowitz wrote his important article, “Are the Courts Going Too Far?” [January], as well as his book, to stimulate the enactment of legislative remedies for an increasingly serious encroachment of the courts into policy-making areas that belong to our elected representatives. Yet he will not achieve any such action by just pointing to social-policy decisions which many legislators hate to tackle overtly. What might prove more effective is an estimate . . . of the substantial monetary costs which many unorthodox court decisions are imposing on the public, and which were never intended by those who wrote the laws. The list of hidden taxes imposed upon the public by current court decisions might then grow long enough to build up public pressure, which alone will stimulate the state legislatures and Congress into action. After all, the political stability of our republic rests on the fact that our electorate votes its pocketbook far more ardently than its social ideologies.
Arnold Bondi
Houston, Texas
