"Judicial Conservatives" in the US disagree with "Judicial Activists" on whether (or to what extent) it is OK to creatively interpret laws (including the Constitution) to get preferred outcomes.
But all common law systems take for granted that judges fill in the inevitable gaps in the law by setting precedents. They can't just interpret it ab initio each time (which in principle is what they are supposed to do on the Continent, though I don't know about practice).
So for example, suppose a city bans anti-abortion pamphleteers from operating on the street outside an abortion clinic. Does that violate the 1st Amendment? Does it matter whether the pamphleteers are quiet or noisy? Does it matter if the exclusion zone is 10 feet vs. 1000 feet?
The text of the constitution is too compressed to answer those edge questions directly. Instead judges have come up with finer-grained rules to satisfy the general requirement of the text, and try (or claim to try) to apply them consistently. Developing these rules is lawmaking.
