Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T06:09:38.396Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reconsidering Judicial Supremacy: From the Counter-Majoritarian Difficulty to Constitutional Transformations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2007

Allison M. Martens
Allison M. Martens
Affiliation:
University of Louisville, E-mail: allison.martens@louisville.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The counter-majoritarian difficulty has for many years framed constitutional scholarship for both law professors and political scientists studying judicial review. Unfortunately, shared attention has not led to shared insights, as these scholars have remained isolated in their respective academies. Recently scholars have begun targeting this disciplinary barrier, and questioning whether developing norms of judicial supremacy have importantly raised the stakes of determining the legitimacy of courts setting policy in a democracy. This article proposes a new approach to the study of judicial review aimed at understanding systemic change rather than institutional legitimacy, using recent concerns over the drift from judicial review to judicial supremacy as a point of departure for study. I recommend, to both normative and positive scholars, a new and integrated focus on the relationship between judicial policymaking and wider transformations of the constitutional order that have previously been obscured by orienting constitutional scholarship around the counter-majoritarian difficulty.Allison M. Martens is: Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Louisville (allison.martens@louisville.edu). She thanks Jeffrey Tulis, James Johnson and three anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions

Type
Research Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , September 2007 , pp. 447 - 459
Copyright
© 2007 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ackerman, Bruce A. 1984. The Storrs lectures: Discovering the Constitution. Yale Law Journal 93: 1013–72.Google Scholar
Ackerman, Bruce A. 1991. We the People: Foundations. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Ackerman, Bruce A. 2000. We the People: Transformations. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Alexander, Larry, and Frederick Schauer. 1997. On extrajudicial constitutional interpretation. Harvard Law Review 110: 1359–87.Google Scholar
Amar, Akhil Reed. 1994. The consent of the governed: Constitutional amendment outside Article V. Columbia Law Review 94: 457–508.Google Scholar
Balkin, Jack M., and Sanford Levinson. 2001. Understanding the Constitutional revolution. Virginia Law Review 87: 1045–104.Google Scholar
Barber, Sotirios A. 1975. The Constitution and the Delegation of Congressional Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Barkow, Rachel E. 2002. More supreme than court? The fall of the political question doctrine and the rise of judicial supremacy. Columbia Law Review 102: 237–336.Google Scholar
Barnum, David G. 1985. The Supreme Court and public opinion: Judicial decision making in the post-New Deal period. Journal of Politics 47 (2): 652–66.Google Scholar
Bickel, Alexander M. 1962. The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Bobbitt, Philip. 1991. Constitutional Interpretation. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA: B. Blackwell.
Bork, Robert H. 1990. The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan.
Brest, Paul. 1986. Congress as constitutional decisionmaker and its power to counter judicial doctrine. Georgia Law Review 21: 57–105.Google Scholar
Burgess, Susan R. 1992. Contest for Constitutional Authority: The Abortion and War Powers Debates. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Calabresi, Steven G. 1999. Caesarism, departmentalism, and Professor Paulsen. Minnesota Law Review 83: 1421–34.Google Scholar
Carpenter, Dale. 2003. Judicial supremacy and its discontents. Constitutional Commentary 20: 405–36.Google Scholar
Casper, Jonathan D. 1976. The Supreme Court and national policy making. American Political Science Review 70 (1): 50–63.Google Scholar
Choper, Jesse H. 1980. Judicial Review and the National Political Process: A Functional Reconsideration of the Role of the Supreme Court. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cross, Frank B. 1997. Political science and the new legal realism: A case of unfortunate interdisciplinary ignorance. Northwestern University Law Review 92: 251–326.Google Scholar
Cross, Frank B., and Blake J. Nelson. 2001. Strategic institutional effects on Supreme Court decisionmaking. Northwestern University Law Review 95: 1437–94.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. 1957. Decision-making in a democracy: The Supreme Court as a national policy-maker. Jourrnal of Public Law 6: 279–295.Google Scholar
Devins, Neal, and Louis Fisher. 2004. The Democratic Constitution. Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press.
Eisgruber, Christopher L. 2001. Constitutional Self-Government. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ely, John Hart. 1980. Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Fisher, Louis. 1985. Constitutional interpretation by members of congress. North Carolina Law Review 63: 707–47.Google Scholar
Fisher, Louis. 1988. Constitutional Dialogues: Interpretation as Political Process. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Fisher, Louis. 2000. Congressional Abdication on War and Spending. The Joseph V. Hughes, Jr., and Holly O. Hughes Series in the Presidency and Leadership Studies, no. 7. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.
Friedman, Barry. 1993. Dialogue and judicial review. Michigan Law Review 91: 577–682.Google Scholar
Friedman, Barry. 2002. The birth of an academic obsession: The history of the countermajoritarian difficulty, part five. Yale Law Journal 112: 153–259.Google Scholar
Friedman, Barry. 2005. The politics of judicial review. Texas Law Review 84: 257–337.Google Scholar
Friedman, Barry. 2006. Taking law seriously. Perspectives on Politics 4 (2): 261–76.Google Scholar
Funston, Richard. 1975. The Supreme Court and critical elections. American Political Science Review 69 (3): 795–811.Google Scholar
Gillman, Howard. 2004. Martin Shapiro and the movement from “old” to “new” institutionalist studies in public law scholarship. Annual Review of Political Science 7: 363–82.Google Scholar
Graber, Mark A. 1993. The non-majoritarian difficulty: legislative deference to the judiciary. Studies in American Political Development 7 (2): 35–73.Google Scholar
Graber, Mark A. 2002. Constitutional politics and constitutional theory: a misunderstood and neglected relationship. Law and Social Inquiry 27 (2): 309–32.Google Scholar
Griffin, Stephen M. 1996. American Constitutionalism: From Theory to Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kahn, Ronald, and Kenneth Ira Kersch. 2006. The Supreme Court and American Political Development. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Klarman, Michael J. 2004. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press.
Kramer, Larry D. 2001. The Supreme Court, 2000 Term: Foreword—We the Court. Harvard Law Review 115: 5–169.Google Scholar
Kramer, Larry D. 2004. The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review. New York: Oxford University Press.
Levinson, Sanford. 1988. Constitutional Faith. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Levinson, Sanford. 1994. Constitutional Protestantism in theory and practice: Two questions for Michael Stokes Paulsen and one for his critics. Georgetown Law Journal 83: 373–84.Google Scholar
Lovell, George I. 2003. Legislative Deferrals: Statutory Ambiguity, Judicial Power, and American Democracy. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.
McCloskey, Robert G. 1960. The American Supreme Court. Chicago History of American Civilization. [Chicago]: University of Chicago Press.
Murphy, Walter F. 1986. Who shall interpret? The quest for the ultimate constitutional interpreter. Review of Politics 48: 401–23.Google Scholar
Nagel, Robert F. 1989. Constitutional Cultures: The Mentality and Consequences of Judicial Review. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Orren, Karen, and Stephen Skowronek. 2004. The Search for American Political Development. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Paulsen, Michael Stokes. 1994. The most dangerous branch—executive power to say what the law is. Georgetown Law Journal 83 (2): 217–345.Google Scholar
Peabody, Bruce G. 2004. Congressional constitutional interpretation and the courts: A preliminary inquiry into legislative attitudes. Law and Social Inquiry 29: 127–71.Google Scholar
Perry, Michael J. 1982. The Constitution, the Courts, and Human Rights: An Inquiry into the Legitimacy of Constitutional Policymaking by the Judiciary. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Post, Robert C., and Reva B. Siegel. 2003. Protecting the Constitution from the people: Juricentric restrictions on Section Five power. Indiana Law Journal 78: 1–45.Google Scholar
Riker, William H., and Barry R. Weingast. 1988. Constitutional regulation of legislative choice: The political consequences of judicial deference to legislatures. Virginia Law Review 74: 373.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Gerald N. 1991. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring about Social Change? Chicago: University of Chicago.
Rosenberg, Gerald N. 1992. Judicial independence and the reality of political power. Review of Politics 54: 369–98.Google Scholar
Salzberger, Eli M. 1993. A positive analysis of the doctrine of separation of powers, or: Why do we have an independent judiciary? International Review of Law and Economics 13: 349–79.Google Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey Allan, and Harold J. Spaeth. 2002. The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Shapiro, Martin M. 1993. Public law and judicial politics. In Political Science: The State of the Discipline II, ed. A. W. Finifter. Washington, DC: American Political Science Association.
Siegel, Reva B. 2001. Text in contest: Gender and the constitution from a social movement perspective. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 150 (1): 297–351.Google Scholar
Smith, Rogers M. 1988. Political jurisprudence, the “new institutionalism,” and the future of public law. American Political Science Review 82 (1): 89–108.Google Scholar
Strauss, David A. 2005. Pop Con. Legal Affairs (March/April).
Sunstein, Cass R. 1999. One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tulis, Jeffrey K. 1987. The Rhetorical Presidency. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Tulis, Jeffrey K. 1997. Constitutional abdication: The senate, the president, and appointments to the Supreme Court. Case Western Law Review 47: 1331–58.Google Scholar
Tushnet, Mark V. 1999. Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Voight, Stefan, and Eli M. Salzberger. 2002. Choosing not to choose: When politicians choose to delegate powers. Kyklos 55 (2): 289–310.Google Scholar
Waldron, Jeremy. 1999. Law and Disagreement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wechsler, Herbert. 1959. Toward neutral principles of constitutional law. Harvard Law Review 73: 1–35.Google Scholar
Weissman, Stephen R. 1995. A Culture of Deference: Congress's Failure of Leadership in Foreign Policy. New York: Basic Books.
Whittington, Keith E. 1999. Constitutional Construction: Divided Powers and Constitutional Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Whittington, Keith E. 2000. Once more unto the breach: Postbehavioralist approaches to judical politics. Law & Social Inquiry 25: 601–34.Google Scholar
Whittington, Keith E. 2002. Extrajudicial constitutional interpretation: Three objections and responses. North Carolina Law Review 80: 773–851.Google Scholar
Whittington, Keith E. 2004. Crossing over: Citation of public law faculty in law reviews. Law & Courts, Newsletter of the Law & Courts Section of the American Political Science Association 14 (2): 5–10.Google Scholar
Winter, Steven L. 1990. Indeterminacy and incommensurability in constitutional law. California Law Review 78: 1441–542.Google Scholar