Entergy Gulf States, Inc. v. Summers

In times of political rancor, vengeful motives are swiftly attributed (and swiftly believed). This is unfortunate, but also unaffecting. The judiciary, rightly understood, is not a political institution but a legal one, meaning we must decide cases on the basis of principled legal points, not political talking points.

This appeal constitutes something of a legal Rorschach test: People see in it what they wish, and one person’s commendable restraint is another’s condemnable activism. Here, one side (Entergy) contends that judicial restraint requires a plain-language reading of the statute, that…