By Jess Bravin

J. Harvie Wilkinson, the federal appeals judge from Charlottesville, Va., long has carried a contrarian streak.

The Reagan appointee disputed President George W. Bushs advice to take up cross-training, possibly costing him elevation to the Supreme Court.

And last month, receiving the Federalist Societys Lifetime Service Award at Georgetown University, Judge Wilkinson hinted that the high court he nearly joined should think twice before striking down the symbol of everything contemporary conservatives revilethe health care overhaul President Barack Obama signed into law over near-unanimous Republican opposition.

It may of course seem tempting to press the advantage when one seemingly has a judicial majority at hand. But this wheel shall turn, Judge Wilkinson said. Lasting credibility on an issue such as judicial restraint requires us to practice it, as the old saying goes, when the shoe pinches as well as when it comforts.

In a new book, Cosmic Constitutional Theory, Judge Wilkinson takes on jurists ranging from conservative Justice Antonin Scalia to liberal Justice Goodwin Liu of the California Supreme Court for legal theorizing that ends up increasing the judiciarys power over democratic processes.

In his Federalist Society remarks, he focused on the constitutionalization of political dispute. Both left and right, he said, now were defined by competing strains of libertarianism.

Liberals have a vision whose central element often appears to be autonomy in lifestyle choices, he said, alluding to abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

Conservatives have a view in which liberty seems to pertain primarily to economic and market freedoms, in areas such as environmental and commercial regulation.

With both sides seeing their positions as constitutional imperatives rather than political aims, he said, the new game is to press ones views into our fundamental charter such that our opponents are left with no quarter and are defeated not in the temporary sense of a political ebb and flow, but in the more absolute tones of constitutional condemnation.

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