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.”

New works by five young political scientists are establishing a new paradigm for studying judicial review. In different ways, Terri Peretti, Ran Hirschl, George Lovell, Kevin McMahon, and Thomas Keck point out that judicial review is established and maintained by elected officials. Adjudication is one of many means that politicians and political movements employ when seeking to make their constitutional visions the law of the land. Elected officials provide vital political foundations for judicial power by creating constitutional courts, vesting those courts with jurisdiction over constitutional questions, staffing those courts with judges prone to exercising judicial power, assisting or initiating litigation aimed at having those courts declare laws unconstitutional, and passing legislation that encourages justices to make public policy in the guise of statutory or constitutional interpretation. Judicial review does not serve to thwart or legitimate popular majorities; rather, it is a practice that alters the balance of power between the numerous political movements that struggle for power in a pluralist democracy.

This review documents how scholarly concern with democratic deficits in American constitutionalism has shifted from the courts to electoral institutions. Prominent political scientists are increasingly rejecting the countermajoritarian difficulty as the proper framework for studying and evaluating judicial power. Political scientists, who study Congress and the presidency, however, have recently emphasized countermajoritarian difficulties with electoral institutions, Realistic normative appraisals of American political institutions, this emerging literature on constitutional politics in the United States maintains, should begin by postulating a set of democratic and constitutional goods, determine the extent to which American institutions as a whole are delivering those goods, and either explain how the political system as a whole might be redesigned to better deliver those goods or accept second-best constitutional goods that can actually be delivered by some attainable combination of political institutions,

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Public law scholars whose scholarship focuses primarily on the public conflicts between constitutional authorities fail to appreciate how constitutional law influences politics and judicial decision making in the United States. Legal norms better explain how constitutional controversies are structured than how they are resolved. Basic principles of constitutional law help secure legal agreement in the face of political disagreement. When political disagreements are resolved into legal disagreements, basic principles of constitutional law alter the terrain on which those conflicts are fought. This article examines how and why constitutional law influences both judicial and public decision making. It discusses the tendency for political scientists to first claim that constitutional law is no different to other forms of policy-making, observes how those claims are almost always qualified in practice, and points to problems with the standard qualifications. The article then considers policy and law in constitutional decision making.