Granting Half a Child

Almost unbidden, while reading Marriage Debate Blog, the following opening from a Montreal Gazette piece by Allison Hanes brought to mind a dynamic of judicial activism to which I hadn't given much thought. Here's the opening, which is almost incidental to my point:

There's no doubt the Montreal man fathered the girl who celebrated her first birthday in July - but should he get to be her daddy?

That's the emotionally and legally loaded question Quebec Superior Court will grapple with this week.

The toddler was born after the man donated sperm to an old flame who was starting a family with her lesbian partner.

I wonder if at least some judges like the feeling of offering these Brave New World rulings. If you think about it, the judge's proper role is relatively mundane: just apply the laws that others have made. By dictating the redefinition of basic, core concepts of our societal understanding, they open up whole areas of moral and factual territory over which they can stand as arbiter. Perhaps it's not so much direct power that drives them as indirect power by way of a conceit of unimpeachable wisdom.