This paper addresses the central jurisprudential issue of the connection between judges’ political commitments and adjudication. Concentrating on the contested question of whether judges are and can ever not be “activist”, it argues that adjudication is inevitably and unavoidably political in nature: there is simply no other way for judges to fulfill their responsibilities other than by resort to basic political values. By examining the recent decision of the SCC in Doucet-Boudreau, the paper offers a very different account of how judges can meet constitutional expectations in contemporary Canada.