In a time of public need, there is a great temptation to use judicial power to make the kinds of general decisions about society that a democracy ordinarily entrusts to the will of the people. Judicial restraint is not a “conservative” or “liberal” value. It is a philosophy that affirms that major social decisions should be made by the people as a whole, or not at all. The Mississippi Supreme Court, for two decades, abandoned judicial restraint. It has now restored its own faith in that democratic principle.