Favorite Moments in Judicial Activism: Nix v. Hedden

Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304 (1893), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court addressed whether a tomato was classified as a fruit or a vegetable under the Tariff Act of March 3, 1883, which required a tax to be paid on imported vegetables, but not fruit. Botanically a tomato is a fruit. The Court, however, unanimously ruled that it was, for these purposes, a vegetable.

Editorial: If the people decide they suddenly want a tomato to be a vegetable, that's an issue best left to the legislature and the electoral processes where the matter can be debated, incorporated into the platforms of competing candidates and, if such a decision be improvidently made, the people could rightly demand the elected official's resignation or outright impeachment (no pun intended). Still some things are too important to be left to the legislature or a century of legal precedent like repealing corporate campaign finance limitations.