The New Year Quote by Mike DeWine

DeWine is selling restraint as a kind of civic virtue, but the real move here is political triage: he’s trying to keep courts from becoming the place where contentious policy fights get settled when legislatures stall. “Proper resolution of the case before them” is courtroom-sounding comfort food, a promise of modesty and order. It flatters anxious voters who hear “activist judges” and imagine robed lawmakers freelancing from the bench.

The subtext is less neutral than it sounds. Calling broad rulings a “temptation” implies judges are prone to vanity or mission-creep, positioning the judiciary as an institution that needs self-denial rather than, say, courage. It’s also a strategic framing: if a court expands rights or restricts government power in a way DeWine’s coalition dislikes, that’s “policy.” If a court narrows rights or defers to the state, that’s just “the case.”

Contextually, this line fits the post-2000s conservative push for “judicial minimalism” and “textualism,” language that plays well in campaigns because it sounds procedural while carrying heavy substantive stakes. In a country where the Supreme Court routinely decides abortion access, voting rules, gun regulations, and administrative power, insisting judges avoid “broad policy” is both an aspiration and a cudgel. It invites a narrower kind of legitimacy: courts are acceptable when they stay quiet. When they speak loudly, the argument goes, they’ve crossed into politics - conveniently absolving elected officials from solving the problems that drove people to litigation in the first place.