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The Nonmajoritarian Difficulty: Legislative Deference to the Judiciary*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
Extract
Theoretical and descriptive studies of the Supreme Court exhibit a curious parallel. Both usually begin from the premise that judicial review is “a deviant institution in a democratic society.” Much normative work claims that independent judicial policymaking is rarely legitimate in a democracy because, with few exceptions, elected officials rather than appointed judges should resolve social controversies. In a frequently cited passage, Alexander Bickel asserts that the Supreme Court is “a counter-majoritarian force” in our system of government. Much empirical work, by comparison, insists that independent judicial policymaking seldom takes place in a democracy because, with few exceptions, judges appointed and confirmed by elected officials sustain whatever social policies are enacted by the dominant national coalition. Robert Dahl observes that it is “unrealistic to suppose that a Court whose members are recruited in the fashion of Supreme Court justices would long hold to norms of Right or Justice substantially at odds with the rest of the political elite.”
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123. Of course, the Buckley decision has had major indirect effects on voting choices by significantly affecting the campaign finance options open to different political entrepreneurs.
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134. The Marshall Court's efforts in the early 1830s to protect the rights of Native Americans may be another example of a truly countermajoritarian ruling. See Cherokee Nationv. Georgia, 5 Peters 1 (1831).
Many Supreme Court decisions can be described as countermajoritarian in the sense that they declare policies unconstitutional that are favored by most Americans. The Supreme Court's school-prayer and flag-burning decisions come to mind. For reasons that need further elaboration, however, these rulings did not strike down policies preferred by clear majorities of the people's elected representatives, the democratic standard normally used by persons concerned with the countermajoritarian problem. See Bickel, The Least Dangerous Branch, 16 (quoted above). Of course, decisions inconsistent with populist conceptions of democracy also present significant theoretical problems that will be explored in future work.
135. Of course, judicial review may be legitimate even when inconsistent with basic features of democratic governance. Walter Murphy and others have consistently reminded scholars that the United States is not a pure, but a constitutional democracy committed to protecting certain values against democratic majorities. See, e.g., Murphy, Fleming, and Harris, 1986, 23–33. Whether judicial review in practice actually advances the values of constitutional democracy, however, is a question with empirical components that members of this school of thought do not fully address.
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