For four years, the case worked its way through the courts. The American Council of the Blind was asking the federal judiciary to rule that American paper money as currently printed violates the federal Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in government programs, because all our bills are the same size, making it hard for blind people to tell a $1 bill from a $20.

Finally, on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled for the plaintiffs, and against the government. "Of the more than 180 countries that issue paper currency, only the United States prints bills that are identical in size and color in all their denominations," Judge Robertson ruled. "More than 100 of the other issuers vary their bills in size according to denomination, and every other issuer includes at least some features that help the visually impaired."

Government attorneys argued that printing bills in varying sizes, or adding raised dots or raised ink, could facilitate counterfeiting, harm the vending machine industry and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Judge Robertson was undeterred. He estimates the cost increase to a bill-printing operation that ran $4.2 billion over the past decade could be as little as 5 percent -- hardly substantial enough to outweigh the need to stop discriminating against the blind.

There are two distinct issues here, and it's worth a moment's attention to keep them apart. The first question is whether the federal government -- specifically, the U.S. Mint -- should spend some extra money making paper notes easier for blind people to tell apart. The answer is that experts at the mint are perfectly free to review this issue, estimate the added cost and how many people would be helped and harmed, and submit a recommendation to the folks charged with making such budgetary decisions. Let them do so, by all means.

But that leads us directly to the second and more important issue. Because the folks charged with making such budgetary decisions do not include U.S. District Judge James Robertson, who with this ruling has just earned himself a place in the political dictionary under "J" for "judicial activism."

Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act to make sure federal offices didn't refuse to hire, say, a person who walks with crutches for some desk job, where being fleet of foot is not a legitimate job requirement. Does anyone really imagine the authors of that act meant to require $20 bills to be different shapes and sizes from $1 bills? Certainly no one else had been able to find that language in the law -- or any statement of such an intent in the congressional debate -- till now.

What will Judge Robertson mandate next? Handicapped ramps on nuclear submarines? Special provisions for blind airline pilots? (Oh dear: In October 1997, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave the go-ahead to a lawsuit under Hawaii state disabled-rights law against Aloha Islandair, a passenger airline, for declining to hire a pilot with vision in only one eye. Sarcasm does get harder all the time.)

Judge Robertson's logic is also worth a closer look. Leaving aside his odd reference to our bills being all the same color -- would a blind person find a Day-glo fiver helpful? -- he pretends to "interpret" U.S. law based on his own personal estimation that the changes he wants wouldn't cost much ("only" a couple hundred million per decade) and the fact that we're the only nation that does things this way.

Will Judge Robertson next rule that affording our citizens jury trials in all criminal matters is absurd, since "no other nation does it"?

Judge Robertson has a right and duty to follow his conscience, of course. But only so long as he strives to enforce the existing law under the firm guiding hand of the Constitution with its separation of powers -- not when his personal preferences and sympathies lead him to make up new law as he goes along.