The EPA's disdain for Congress' law dealing with the regulation of carbon dioxide is obviously driven by President Bush's irresponsible refusal to address the threat of catastrophic climate disruption caused by global warming. Such disdain for the law is part and parcel of President Bush's violations of many other laws, including numerous treaties forbidding wars of aggression, torture and other human rights abuses as well as violations of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution (forbidding warrantless wiretapping, as ordered by President Bush for more than two years) and laws passed by Congress, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (prohibiting warrantless wiretapping), the War Crimes Act (prohibiting cruel and inhumane treatment of detainees) and the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 (prohibiting the kidnapping of people and sending them off to be tortured in other countries, as President Bush has done).

Our complacent Congress has utterly failed to assert its constitutional role in the disastrous Iraq war, so it is essential to our democracy that the courts ensure that a balance of power is restored and our president and the executive branch be constrained by the law, rather than being allowed to determine when and under what circumstances the rules will be applied to them. The role of our courts is to interpret and apply the law. Requiring the executive branch to comply with the law is not inappropriate "judicial activism," as charged by the Deseret Morning News. Rather, it is exactly what our Constitution requires in order to establish the rule of law and preserve the balance of power so crucial to our democracy.

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Rocky Anderson is the mayor of Salt Lake City.