Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, presumptive Republican presidential candidate gestures during a town hall meeting at the Mizel Family Cultural Arts Center in Denver on May 2, 2008. Sen. McCain concludes his "Call to Action Tour" with his Denver campaign stop. (UPI Photo/Gary C. Caskey)

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., May 6 (UPI) -- Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Tuesday in North Carolina said a president should do away with judicial activism and nominate judges who observe the rule of law.

"In federal and state courts, and in the practice of law across our nation, there are still men and women who understand the proper role of our judiciary. And I intend to find them, and promote them, if I am elected president," McCain told a crowd at Wake Forest University.

McCain said powers granted to national leaders by the writers of the U.S. Constitution lose their meaning if federal judges make decisions in the court of law on matters best decided in a public forum.

"The moral authority of our judiciary depends on judicial self-restraint but this authority quickly vanishes when a court presumes to make law instead of apply it," the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said, adding "A court is hardly competent to check the abuses of other branches of government when it cannot even control itself."

McCain criticized the U.S. Senate for its prompt ability to pass controversial earmark legislation while delaying votes on federal judges, which he called "a basic Senate duty under our Constitution."

He said his vision of the judiciary was in the mold of the strict constructionist ideology, saying Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito "would serve as the model for my own nominees if that responsibility falls to me."