Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T11:12:57.111Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Congressional Attacks on the Supreme Court: A Mechanism to Maintain, Build, and Consolidate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Dave Bridge  and
Curt Nichols
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Reexamination and reinterpretation of the “mature” (1955–1984) New Deal era of congressional attacks on the Supreme Court reveals a new hypothesis: that Court‐curbing efforts played a previously unrecognized role in party system development. Court rulings that create inter‐ and intraparty tension provide opportunities for various actors to attack the Court in an effort to solidify their faction's standing within national coalitional politics. Congressional attackers can use Court‐curbing resolutions and amendments in efforts to help them maintain coalitional cohesion, build a new majority, or consolidate previous victories. Thus, we might see legislative‐judicial relations as an unrecognized “site” of political development, where coalitional change is opposed and wrought.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , Winter 2016 , pp. 100 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2016 

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

References

Abraham, Henry J. 1985. Justices & Presidents. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Adamany, David. 1980. The Supreme Court's Role in Critical Elections. In Realignment in American Politics, ed. Campbell, Bruce A. and Trilling, Richard J., 229–59. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Aistrup, Joseph A. 1996. The Southern Strategy Revisited: Republican Top‐Down Advancement. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press.Google Scholar
Aldrich, John H. 1995. Why Parties?: The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Barnes, Jeb. 2007. Bringing the Courts Back In: Interbranch Perspectives on the Role of Courts in American Politics and Policy Making. Annual Review of Political Science 10:25–43.Google Scholar
Bensel, Richard Franklin. 2000. The Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Black, Earl, and Black, Merle. 2002. The Rise of Southern Republicans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, James. 1970. Nixon's Southern Strategy “It's All in the Charts.” New York Times, May 17, 215.Google Scholar
Bridge, Dave. 2014. Presidential Power Denied: A New Model of Veto Overrides Using Political Time. Congress & the Presidency 41 (2): 149–66.Google Scholar
Burnham, Walter Dean. 1970. Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Clark, Hunter R. 1995. Justice Brennan: The Great Conciliator. New York: Birch Lane.Google Scholar
Clark, Tom S. 2011. The Limits of Judicial Independence. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clayton, Cornell, and May, David D. 1999. The New Institutionalism and Supreme Court Decision Making: Toward A Political Regimes Approach. Polity 32 (2): 233–52.Google Scholar
Congressional Record. 1955.Google Scholar
Congressional Record. 1973.Google Scholar
Cook, Daniel M., and Polsky, Andrew J. 2005. Political Time Reconsidered: Unbuilding and Rebuilding the State Under the Reagan Administration. American Politics Research 33 (4): 577–605.Google Scholar
Crockett, David A. 2002. The Opposition Presidency: Leadership and the Constraints of History. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.Google Scholar
Crockett, David A. 2008. Running Against the Grain: How Opposition Presidents Win the White House. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.Google Scholar
Crowe, Justin. 2012. Building the Judiciary: Law, Courts, and the Politics of Institutional Development. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Culp, Maurice S. 1929. Survey of the Proposals to Limit or Deny the Power of Judicial Review by the Supreme Court of the United States (Part I). Indiana Law Journal 4 (6): 386–98.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. 1957. Decision‐Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National Policy‐Maker. Journal of Public Law 6:279–95.Google Scholar
Democratic Party Platform. 1948. Americanpresidency.org (accessed January 20, 2015).Google Scholar
Democratic Party Platform. 1952. Americanpresidency.org (accessed January 20, 2015).Google Scholar
DiSalvo, Daniel. 2012. Engines of Change: Party Factions in American Politics: 1868–2010. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Engel, Stephen. 2011. American Politicians Confront the Courts: Opposition Politics and Changing Responses to Judicial Power. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee, and Knight, Jack. 1997. The Choices Justices Make. Washington, DC: CQ Press.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee, and Segal, Jeffrey A. 2007. Advice and Consent: The Politics of Judicial Appointments. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feinstein, Brian D., and Schickler, Eric. 2008. Platforms and Partners: The Civil Rights Realignment Reconsidered. Studies in American Political Development 22:1–31.Google Scholar
Funston, Richard. 1975. The Supreme Court and Critical Elections. American Political Science Review 69 (3): 795–811.Google Scholar
Galvin, Daniel J. 2009. Presidential Party Building: Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gates, John. B. 1992. The Supreme Court and Partisan Realignment: A Macro and Microlevel Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Gerring, John. 1998. Party Ideologies in America: 1828–1996. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gillman, Howard. 2002. How Political Parties Can Use the Courts to Advance Their Agendas: Federal Courts in the United States, 1875–1891. American Political Science Review 96 (3): 511–24.Google Scholar
Gillman, Howard. 2006a. Regime Politics, Jurisprudential Regimes, and Unenumerated Rights. University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 9 (1): 107–19.Google Scholar
Gillman, Howard. 2006b. Party Politics and Constitutional Change: The Political Origins of Liberal Judicial Activism. In The Supreme Court & American Political Development, ed. Kahn, Ronald and Kersch, Ken I., 138–68. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Gillman, Howard. 2008. Courts and the Politics of Partisan Coalitions. In The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics, ed. Whittington, Keith E., Keleman, R. Daniel, and Caldeira, Gregory A., 644–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gottfried, Paul. 1992. The Conservative Movement. Woodbridge, CT: Twayne.Google Scholar
Graber, Mark A. 1993. The Nonmajoritarian Difficulty: Legislative Deference to the Judiciary. Studies in American Political Development 7 (1): 35–73.Google Scholar
Graber, Mark A. 2005. Constructing Judicial Review. Annual Review of Political Science 8:425–51.Google Scholar
Graber, Mark A. 2006a. Does it Really Matter: Conservative Courts in a Conservative Era. Fordham Law Review 75 (2): 675–708.Google Scholar
Graber, Mark A. 2006b. Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Graber, Mark A. 2008. The Countermajoritarian Difficulty: From Courts to Congress to Constitutional Order. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 4:361–84.Google Scholar
Greenhouse, Linda, and Siegel, Reva. 2010. Before Roe v. Wade: Voices that Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court's Ruling. New York: Kaplan.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Jeffrey A., Peck, Justin, and Weaver, Vesla M. 2010. Between Reconstructions: Congressional Action of Civil Rights, 1891–1940. Studies in American Political Development 24:57–89.Google Scholar
Karol, David. 2009. Party Position Change in American Politics: Coalition Management. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Keck, Thomas. 2007. Party Politics or Judicial Independence: The Regime Politics Literature Hits the Law Schools. Law & Social Inquiry 32 (2): 511–44.Google Scholar
Kersch, Ken I. 2004. Constructing Civil Liberties: Discontinuities in the Development of American Constitutional Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. 1955. A Theory of Critical Elections. Journal of Politics 17 (1): 3–18.Google Scholar
Klarman, Michael J. 2004. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lasser, William. 1985. The Supreme Court in Periods of Critical Realignment. Journal of Politics 47 (4): 1176–87.Google Scholar
Lemieux, Scott E., and Lovell, George. 2010. Legislative Defaults: Interbranch Power Sharing and Abortion Politics. Polity 42 (2): 210–43.Google Scholar
Lovell, George I. 2003. Legislative Deferrals: Statutory Ambiguity, Judicial Power, and American Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lovell, George I., and Lemieux, Scott E. 2006. Assessing Juristocracy: Are Judges Rulers or Agents? Maryland Law Review 65 (1): 100–14.Google Scholar
Manza, Jeff, and Brooks, Clem. 1999. Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignment and U.S. Party Coalitions. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mason, Robert. 2004. Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New Majority. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Mason, Robert, and Morgan, Iwan. 2013. Seeking a New Majority: The Republican Party and American Politics, 1960–1980. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.Google Scholar
Mayhew, David R. 1974. Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
McMahon, Kevin J. 2000. Constitutional Vision and Supreme Court Decisions: Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race. Studies in American Political Development 14 (1): 20–50.Google Scholar
McMahon, Kevin J. 2004. Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race: How the Presidency Paved the Road to Brown. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.Google Scholar
McMahon, Kevin J. 2007. Presidents, Political Regimes, and Contentious Supreme Court Nominations: A Historical Institutional Model. Law & Social Inquiry 32 (4): 919–54.Google Scholar
Miles, Michael W. 1980. The Odyssey of the American Right. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Merle. 1974. Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman. New York: Putnam Books.Google Scholar
Morone, James A. 2003. Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History. New Haven, CT: Yale University.Google Scholar
Nagel, Stuart S. 1965. Court Curbing Periods in American History. Vanderbilt Law Review 18 (3): 925–44.Google Scholar
Nash, George H. 1976. The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Nichols, Curt. 2012. The Presidential Rankings Game: Critical Review and Some New Discoveries. Presidential Studies Quarterly 42 (2): 274–99.Google Scholar
Nichols, Curt. 2015. Reagan Reorders the Political Regime: A Historical‐Institutional Approach to Analysis of Change. Presidential Studies Quarterly 45 (4).Google Scholar
Nichols, Curt, Dave, Bridge, and Carrington, Adam. 2014. Court Curbing via Attempt to Amend the Constitution: An Update of Congressional Attacks on the Supreme Court from 1955–1984. Justice Systems Journal 35 (4): 331–43.Google Scholar
Nichols, Curt, and Myers, Adam S. 2010. Exploiting the Opportunity for Reconstructive Leadership: Presidential Responses to Enervated Political Regimes. American Politics Research 38 (5): 806–41.Google Scholar
Nixon, Richard. 1969. Address to the Nation on the War in Vietnam. Americanpresidency.org (accessed January 20, 2015).Google Scholar
Orren, Karen, and Skowronek, Stephen. 2005. The Search for American Political Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ostrow, Ronald J. 1986. Meese's View that Court Doesn't Make Law. Los Angeles Times, October 24. http://articles.latimes.com/1986-10-24/news/mn-7159_1_supreme-court-decisions (accessed January 20, 2015).Google Scholar
Pew Forum. 2007. Religious Landscape Survey. http://Religions.pewforum.org (accessed January 20, 2015).Google Scholar
Pfiffner, James P. 1986. The Reagan Budget Juggernaut. In The President and Economic Policy, ed. Pfiffner, James P., 108–35, Philadelphia, PA: Institute for Study of Human Issues.Google Scholar
Phillips, Kevin P. 1969. The Emerging Republican Majority. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House.Google Scholar
Phillips, Kevin P. 1972. How Nixon Will Win. New York Times Magazine, August 6, 8.Google Scholar
Polsky, Andrew J. 2012. Partisan Regimes in American Politics. Polity 44 (1): 51–80.Google Scholar
Powe, Lucas A. 2000. The Warren Court and American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Reagan, Ronald. 1977. The Greatest Speeches of Ronald Reagan. West Palm Beach, FL: NewsMax.Google Scholar
Reagan, Ronald. 1981. First Inaugural Address. Americanpresidency.org (accessed January 20, 2015).Google Scholar
Republican Platform. 1980. Americanpresidency.org (accessed January 20, 2015).Google Scholar
Rieder, Jonathan. 1989. The Rise of the “Silent Majority.” In The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980, ed. Fraser, Steve and Gerstle, Gary, 243–68: Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Gerald N. 1991. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Gerald N. 1992. Judicial Independence and the Reality of Political Power. Review of Politics 54 (3): 369–98.Google Scholar
Schattschneider, E. E. 1960. The Semi‐Sovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America. New York: Holt, Rinchart, and Winston.Google Scholar
Schick, Allen. 1982. How the Budget Battle Was Won and Lost. In President and Congress: Assessing Reagan's First Year, ed. Ornstein, Norman J., 14–43. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.Google Scholar
Schofield, Norman, and Miller, Gary. 2007. Elections and Activist Coalitions in the United States. American Journal of Political Science 51 (3): 518–31.Google Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A., and Cover, Albert D. 1989. Ideological Values and the Votes of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices. American Political Science Review 83 (2): 557–65.Google Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A., and Spaeth, Harold J. 2002. The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A., Timpone, Richard J., and Howard, Robert M. 2000. Buyer Beware? Presidential Success Through Supreme Court Appointments. Political Research Quarterly 53 (3): 557–73.Google Scholar
Shiengate, Adam. 2003. Political Entrepreneurship, Institutional Change, and American Political Development. Studies in American Political Development 17 (2): 185–203.Google Scholar
Skowronek, Stephen. 1982. Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Skowronek, Stephen. 1993. The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush. New York: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Skowronek, Stephen. 2011. Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Stephen, Skowronek, and Glassman, Matthew, Ed. 2007. Formative Acts: American Politics in the Making. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Solomon, Mark. 1998. The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917–1936. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.Google Scholar
Sundquist, James L. 1983. The Decline and Resurgence of Congress. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
United Press International. 1975. Congressman Leaves Democratic Party. Lodi News‐Sentinel, January 24, 9.Google Scholar
Warren, Charles. 1913. Legislative and Judicial Attacks on the Supreme Court of the United States—A History of the Twenty‐Fifth Section of the Judiciary Act. American Law Review 47 (1): 1–34.Google Scholar
Warren, Earl. 1977. The Memoirs of Chief Justice Earl Warren. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Whittington, Keith E. 2003. Legislative Sanctions and the Strategic Environment of Judicial Review. International Journal of Constitutional Law 1 (3): 446–74.Google Scholar
Whittington, Keith E. 2005a. “Interpose Your Friendly Hand”: Political Supports for the Exercise of Judicial Review by the United States Supreme Court. American Political Science Review 99 (4): 583–96.Google Scholar
Whittington, Keith E. 2005b. Congress Before the Lochner Court. Boston University Law Review 85 (3): 821–58.Google Scholar
Whittington, Keith E. 2007. Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy: The Presidency, the Supreme Court, and Constitutional Leadership in U.S. History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Daniel K. 2010. God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Woods, Jeff. 2004. Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anti‐Communism in the South, 1948–1968. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

Abington v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963).Google Scholar
Akron v. Akron Ctr. for Reproductive Health, 462 U.S. 416 (1983).Google Scholar
Beal v. Doe, 432 U.S. 438 (1977).Google Scholar
Brown v. Board of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954).Google Scholar
Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).Google Scholar
Jencks v. United States, 353 U.S. 657 (1957).Google Scholar
Karcher v. Daggett, 462 U.S. 725 (1983).Google Scholar
Maher v. Roe, 432 U.S. 464 (1977).Google Scholar
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).Google Scholar
NRLB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1 (1937).Google Scholar
Pennsylvania v. Nelson, 350 U.S. 497 (1956).Google Scholar
Poelker v. Doe, 432 U.S. 519 (1977).Google Scholar
Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964).Google Scholar
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).Google Scholar
Swann v. Charlotte‐Mecklenburg Bd. of Educ., 402 U.S. 1 (1971).Google Scholar
Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957).Google Scholar
United States v. Carolene Prods. Co., 304 U.S. 144 (1938).Google Scholar
Washington v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 458 U.S. 457 (1982).Google Scholar
Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178 (1957).Google Scholar
West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379 (1937).Google Scholar
Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298 (1957).Google Scholar