The Yale Law Journal Company, Inc.
The Core of the Case against Judicial Review
Author(s): Jeremy Waldron
Source: The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 115, No. 6 (Apr., 2006), pp. 1346-1406
Published by: The Yale Law Journal Company, Inc.
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JEREMY WALDRON
The Core of the Case Against Judicial Review
A B S T R A C T. This Essay states the general case against judicial review of legislation c
and in a way that is uncluttered by discussions of particular decisions or the history of its
emergence in particular systems of constitutional law. The Essay criticizes judicial review o
main grounds. First, it argues that there is no reason to suppose that rights are better pro
by this practice than they would be by democratic legislatures. Second, it argues that, quit
from the outcomes it generates, judicial review is democratically illegitimate. The second
argument is familiar; the first argument less so.
However, the case against judicial review is not absolute or unconditional. In this Ess
premised on a number of conditions, including that the society in question has good wo
democratic institutions and that most of its citizens take rights seriously (even if they may
disagree about what rights they have). The Essay ends by considering what follows from t
failure of these conditions.
A U T H O R. University Professor in the School of Law, Columbia University. (From J
2006, Professor of Law, New York University.) Earlier versions of this Essay were presente
the Colloquium in Legal and Social Philosophy at University College London, at a law fa
workshop at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and at a constitutional law conference a
Harvard Law School. I am particularly grateful to Ronald Dworkin, Ruth Gavison, and
Shiffrin for their formal comments on those occasions and also to James Allan, Aharon B
Richard Bellamy, Aileen Cavanagh, Arthur Chaskalson, Michael Dorf, Richard Fallon, Ch
Fried, Andrew Geddis, Stephen Guest, Ian Haney-Lopez, Alon Harel, David Heyd, Sam
Issacharoff, Elena Kagan, Kenneth Keith, Michael Klarman, John Manning, Andrei Marm
Frank Michelman, Henry Monaghan, Wronique Munoz-Darde, John Morley, Matthew P
Richard Pildes, Joseph Raz, Carol Sanger, David Wiggins, and Jo Wolff for their sugges
and criticisms. Hundreds of others have argued with me about this issue over the years: T
Essay is dedicated to all of them, collegially and with thanks.
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ESSAY CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1348
I. DEFINITION OF JUDICIAL REVIEW 1353
II. FOUR ASSUMPTIONS 1359
A. Democratic Institutions 1361
B. Judicial Institutions 1363
C. A Commitment to Rights 1364
D. Disagreement About Rights 1366
III. THE FORM OF THE ARGUMENT 1369
IV. OUTCOME-RELATED REASONS 1376
A. Orientation to Particular Cases 1379
B. Orientation to the Text of a Bill of Rights 1380
C. Stating Reasons 1382
V. PROCESS-RELATED REASONS 1386
VI. THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY 1395
VII.NON-CORE CASES 1401
CONCLUSION 1406
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
INTRODUCTION
Should judges have the authority to strike down legislation when they are
convinced that it violates individual rights? In many countries they do. Th
best known example is the United States. In November 2003, the Suprem
Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that the state's marriage licensing laws
violated state constitutional rights to due process and equal protection b
implicitly limiting marriage to a union between a man and a woman.' Th
decision heartened many people who felt that their rights had bee
unrecognized and that, as gay men and women, they had been treated as
second-class citizens under the existing marriage law.2 Even if the decision is
eventually overturned by an amendment to the state constitution, the plaintiff
and their supporters can feel that at least the issue of rights is now being
confronted directly. A good decision and a process in which claims of rights a
steadily and seriously considered3- for many people these are reasons fo
cherishing the institution of judicial review. They acknowledge that judici
review sometimes leads to bad decisions - such as the striking down of 17
labor statutes by state and federal courts in the Lochner era4 - and they
acknowledge that the practice suffers from some sort of democratic deficit. Bu
they say, these costs are often exaggerated or mischaracterized. The democrat
process is hardly perfect and, in any case, the democratic objection is itse
problematic when what is at stake is the tyranny of the majority. We can, the
argue, put up with an occasional bad outcome as the price of a practice that ha
given us decisions like Lawrence, Roe, and Brown,5 which upheld our society's
commitment to individual rights in the face of prejudiced majorities.
That is almost the last good thing I shall say about judicial review. (I
wanted to acknowledge up front the value of many of the decisions it has give
us and the complexity of the procedural issues.) This Essay will argue that
judicial review of legislation is inappropriate as a mode of final decisionmaking
in a free and democratic society.
i. Goodridge v. Dep't of Pub. Health, 798 N.E.2d 941 (Mass. 2003).
2. See Landmark Ruling: The Victors, Boston Herald, Nov. 19, 2003, at 5.
3. This adapts a phrase of Ronald Dworkin's, from Ronald Dworkin, A Matter of
Principle 9-32 (1985).
4. Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905). The calculation of the overall number of cases
which state or federal statutes on labor relations and labor conditions were struck down in
the period 1880-1935 is based on lists given in William E. Forbath, Law and the Shapin
of the American Labor Movement apps. A, C, at 177-92,199-203 (1991).
5. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003); Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973); Brown v. Bd.
Educ, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
Arguments to this effect have been heard before, and often. They arise
naturally in regard to a practice of this kind. In liberal political theory,
legislative supremacy is often associated with popular self-government,6 and
democratic ideals are bound to stand in an uneasy relation to any practice that
says elected legislatures are to operate only on the sufferance of unelected
judges. Alexander Bickel summed up the issue in the well-known phrase, "the
counter-majoritarian difficulty."7 We can try to mitigate this difficulty, Bickel
said, by showing that existing legislative procedures do not perfectly represent
the popular or the majority will. But, he continued,
nothing in the further complexities and perplexities of the system,
which modern political science has explored with admirable and
ingenious industry, and some of which it has tended to multiply with a
fertility that passes the mere zeal of the discoverer - nothing in these
complexities can alter the essential reality that judicial review is a
deviant institution in the American democracy.8
In countries that do not allow legislation to be invalidated in this way, the
people themselves can decide finally, by ordinary legislative procedures,
whether they want to permit abortion, affirmative action, school vouchers, or
gay marriage. They can decide among themselves whether to have laws
punishing the public expression of racial hatred or restricting candidates'
spending in elections. If they disagree about any of these matters, they can elect
representatives to deliberate and settle the issue by voting in the legislature.
That is what happened, for example, in Britain in the 196os, when Parliament
debated the liberalization of abortion law, the legalization of homosexual
conduct among consenting adults, and the abolition of capital punishment.9
On each issue, wide-ranging public deliberation was mirrored in serious debate
in the House of Commons. The quality of those debates (and similar debates in
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere) make nonsense of the claim
that legislators are incapable of addressing such issues responsibly-just as the
6. The locus classicus for this concept is John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, in Two
Treatises of Government 265, 366-67 (Peter Laslett ed., Cambridge Univ. Press 1988)
(1690).
7. Alexander M. Bickel, The Least Dangerous Branch 16-17 (2d ed. 1986) ("[J]udicial
review is a counter-majoritarian force in our system. . . . [W]hen the Supreme Court
declares unconstitutional a legislative act . . . it thwarts the will of representatives of the
actual people of the here and now-").
8. Id. at 17-18.
9. Abortion Act, 1967, c. 87; Sexual Offences Act, 1967, c. 60; Murder (Abolition of Death
Penalty) Act, 1965, c. 71.
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
liberal outcomes of those proceedings cast
that popular majorities will not uphold the rig
By contrast, in the United States the people
and federal legislatures can address these ques
no certainty that their decisions will prevail.
legislative resolution decides to bring the ma
finally prevails will be that of the judges. As
a defender of judicial review-on "intracta
questions of political morality that philosoph
debated for many centuries," the people and
to "accept the deliverances of a majority of th
great issues is not spectacularly special.'10
In recent years, a number of books have ap
in America." For years, support for the pr
opposition from conservative opponents of th
upheld. In recent years, however, we have see
to judicial review, as the Rehnquist Court
achievements of liberal legislative policy.'
defenses of the practice as well.'3 The two-hun
Madison elicited numerous discussions of it
and the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Boa
reminder of the service that the nation's cour
century by spearheading the attack on segrega
So the battle lines are drawn, the maneuver
on both sides are well understood. Wha
io. Ronald Dworkin, Freedom's Law: The M
Constitution 74 (1996).
11. See, e.g., Larry D. Kramer, The People Themse
Judicial Review (2004) ; Mark Tushnet, Takin
Courts (1999).
12. See, e.g., United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2
Against Women Act); United States v. Lopez, 514 U
has no authority to legislate a prohibition on the poss
from a school); see abo Mark Tushnet, Alarmism Ve
Rehnquist Court, 78 Ind. L.J. 47 (2003).
13. See, e.g., Dworkin, supra note 10; Christoph
Government (2001); Lawrence G. Sager, Just
American Constitutional Practice (2004).
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
intervention? I have written plenty about this myself already.14 Why another
article attacking judicial review?
What I want to do is identify a core argument against judicial review that is
independent of both its historical manifestations and questions about its
particular effects - the decisions (good and bad) that it has yielded, the
heartbreaks and affirmations it has handed down. I want to focus on aspects of
the case against judicial review that stand apart from arguments about the way
judges exercise their powers and the spirit (deferential or activist) in which
they approach the legislation brought before them for their approval. Recent
books by Mark Tushnet and Larry Kramer entangle a theoretical critique of the
practice with discussions of its historical origins and their vision of what a less
judicialized U.S. Constitution would involve."5 This is not a criticism of
Tushnet and Kramer. Their books are valuable in large part because of the
richness and color they bring to the theoretical controversy. As Frank
Michelman says in his blurb on the back cover of The People Themselves,
Kramer's history "puts flesh on the bones of debates over judicial review and
popular constitutionalism."'16 And so it does. But I want to take off some of the
flesh and boil down the normative argument to its bare bones so that we can
look directly at judicial review and see what it is premised on.
Charles Black once remarked that, in practice, opposition to judicial review
tends to be "a sometime thing," with people supporting it for the few cases
they cherish (like Brown or Roe) and opposing it only when it leads to
outcomes they deplore.'7 In politics, support for judicial review is sometimes
intensely embroiled in support for particular decisions. This is most notably
true in the debate over abortion rights, in which there is a panic-stricken
refusal among pro-choice advocates to even consider the case against judicial
review for fear this will give comfort and encouragement to those who regard
Roe v. Wade as an unwarranted intrusion on the rights of conservative
legislators. I hope that setting out the core case against judicial review in
14- See, e.g., Jeremy Waldron, Law and Disagreement 10-17, 211-312 (1999); Jeremy
Waldron, Deliberation, Disagreement, and Voting, in Deliberative Democracy and Human
Rights 210 (Harold Hongju Koh & Ronald C. Slye eds., 1999) [hereinafter Waldron,
Deliberation, Disagreement, and Voting]; Jeremy Waldron, Judicial Power and Popular
Sovereignty, in Marbury Versus Madison: Documents and Commentary 181 (Mark A.
Graber & Michael Perhac eds., 2002) [hereinafter Waldron, Judicial Power and Popular
Sovereignty] ; Jeremy Waldron, A Right-Based Critique of Constitutional Rights, 13 Oxford J.
Legal Stud. 18 (1993) [hereinafter Waldron, A Right-Based Critique].
15. See Kramer, supra note 11 ; Tushnet, supra note 11.
16. Frank Michelman, Jacket Comment on Kramer, supra note 11.
17. Charles L. Black, Jr., A New Birth of Freedom: Human Rights, Named and Unnamed
109 (1997)
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
abstraction from its particular consequence
panic. It may still be the case that judicial
measure against legislative pathologies rel
particular countries. But even if that is so, it
sort of defense goes to the heart of the matt
instead as an exceptional reason to refrain
what, in most circumstances, would be a
against the practice.
A connected reason for boiling the flesh
critique is that judicial review is an issue
different history, a different judicial cultur
legislative institutions than the United State
British debate the relatively limited pow
legislation, they are not particularly interest
the Federalists in 1805 or in the legacy of Br
needed is some general understanding, un
historical, and political preoccupations of eac
My own writing on this has been more
managed to discuss judicial review in a way th
jurisprudence and political philosophy.19 I am
i8. Again, this is not to dismiss the more fleshed-out
that we take a clear view of the theoretical argu
understanding of the way the debate unfolds in,
United States, Canada, and South Africa.
19. I have asked whether the very idea of individua
Waldron, A Right-Based Critique, supra note 14.
republican ideas in Jeremy Waldron, Judicial Revie
Eminent Tribunal: Judicial Supremacy and the
ed., 2004), its relation to the difference between B
of democracy in Jeremy Waldron, Rights and M
XXXII: Majorities and Minorities 44 (John W. Ch
[hereinafter Waldron, Rights and Majorities], and
popular sovereignty in Waldron, Judicial Power and P
considered the relation of the judicial review contr
realism and the objectivity of values in Jeremy Waldr
in Natural Law Theory 158 (Robert P. George e
Irrelevance of Moral Objectivity] ; and Jeremy Waldr
Am. J. Juris. 75 (1998) [hereinafter Waldron, Mo
responded to various defenses of judicial review, rang
Jeremy Waldron, Precommitment and Disagreeme
Foundations 271 (Larry Alexander ed., 1998) [here
Disagreement], to the particular argument that R
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
a clear and uncluttered way what the basic objection is, nor do I think I have
given satisfactory answers to those who have criticized the arguments I
presented in Law and Disagreement and elsewhere.
In this Essay, I shall argue that judicial review is vulnerable to attack on
two fronts. It does not, as is often claimed, provide a way for a society to focus
clearly on the real issues at stake when citizens disagree about rights; on the
contrary, it distracts them with side-issues about precedent, texts, and
interpretation. And it is politically illegitimate, so far as democratic values are
concerned: By privileging majority voting among a small number of unelected
and unaccountable judges, it disenfranchises ordinary citizens and brushes
aside cherished principles of representation and political equality in the final
resolution of issues about rights.
I will proceed as follows. In Part I, I will define the target of my
argument- strong judicial review of legislation - and distinguish it from other
practices that it is not my intention to attack. Part II will set out some
assumptions on which my argument is predicated: My argument against
judicial review is not unconditional but depends on certain institutional and
political features of modern liberal democracies. Then, in Part III, I will review
the general character of the argument I propose to make. That argument will
attend to both outcome- and process-related reasons, and these will be
discussed in Parts IV and V, respectively. In Part VI, I will expose the fallacy of
the most common argument against allowing representative institutions to
prevail: that such a system inevitably leads to the tyranny of the majority.
Finally, in Part VII, I shall say a little bit about non-core cases - that is, cases in
which there is reason to depart from the assumptions on which the core
argument depends.
1. DEFINITION OF JUDICIAL REVIEW
I begin with a brief account of what I mean by judicial review. This is an
Essay about judicial review of legislation, not judicial review of executive action
or administrative decisionmaking.20 The question I want to address concerns
about its ultimate compatibility with democracy, see Jeremy Waldron, Judicial Review and the
Conditions of Democracy, 6 J. Pol. Phil. 335 (1998).
20. Much of what is done by the European Court of Human Rights is judicial review of
executive action. Some of it is judicial review of legislative action, and some of it is actually
judicial review of judicial action. See Seth F. Kreimer, Exploring the Dark Matter of Judicial
Review: A Constitutional Census of the i??os, 5 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 427, 458-59 (1997),
for the claim that the majority of constitutional decisions by the United States Supreme
Court concern challenges to the actions of low-level bureaucrats rather than of legislatures.
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
primary legislation enacted by the elected l
thought that some of the same arguments
After all, the executive has some elective cred
oppose decisionmaking by judges. But it is alm
executive's elective credentials are subject to t
and, as a result, that officials may properl
accordance with legal authorization.21 T
legislators has been propounded too: Judicia
the legislature to the rule of law. But in th
uncontested; indeed that is precisely the co
here.
There are a variety of practices all over the world that could be grouped
under the general heading of judicial review of legislation. They may be
distinguished along several dimensions. The most important difference is
between what I shall call strong judicial review and weak judicial review. My
target is strong judicial review.22
In a system of strong judicial review, courts have the authority to decline to
apply a statute in a particular case (even though the statute on its own terms
plainly applies in that case) or to modify the effect of a statute to make its
application conform with individual rights (in ways that the statute itself does
not envisage). Moreover, courts in this system have the authority to establish
as a matter of law that a given statute or legislative provision will not be
applied, so that as a result of stare decisis and issue preclusion a law that they
have refused to apply becomes in effect a dead letter. A form of even stronger
judicial review would empower the courts to actually strike a piece of
legislation out of the statute-book altogether. Some European courts have this
21. Seana Shiffrin, Richard Pildes, Frank Michelman, and others have urged me to consider
how far my argument against judicial review of legislation might also extend to judicial
review of executive action in the light of statutes enacted long ago or statutes whose
provisions require extensive interpretation by the courts. Clearly more needs to be said
about this. Pursuing the matter in this direction might be considered either a reductio ad
absurdum of my argument or an attractive application of it.
22. The distinction between strong and weak judicial review is separate from the question of
judicial supremacy. Judicial supremacy refers to a situation in which (1) the courts settle
important issues for the whole political system, (2) those setdements are treated as
absolutely binding on all other actors in the political system, and (3) the courts do not defer
to the positions taken on these matters in other branches (not even to the extent to which
they defer to their own past decisions under a limited principle of stare decisis). See Barry
Friedman, The History of the Countermajoritarian Difficulty, Part One: The Road to Judicial
Supremacy, 73 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 333, 352 & n.63 (1998); Jeremy Waldron, Judicial Power and
Popular Sovereignty, supra note 14, at 191-98.
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
authority.23 It appears that American courts do not,4 but the real effect of their
authority is not much short of it.25
In a system of weak judicial review, by contrast, courts may scrutinize
legislation for its conformity to individual rights but they may not decline to
apply it (or moderate its application) simply because rights would otherwise be
violated.26 Nevertheless, the scrutiny may have some effect. In the United
Kingdom, the courts may review a statute with a view to issuing a "declaration
of incompatibility" in the event that "the court is satisfied that the provision is
incompatible with a Convention right" - i.e., with one of the rights set out in
the European Convention of Human Rights as incorporated into British law
through the Human Rights Act. The Act provides that such declaration "does
not affect the validity, continuing operation or enforcement of the provision in
respect of which it is given; and . . . is not binding on the parties to the
proceedings in which it is made."27 But still it has an effect: A minister may use
such a declaration as authorization to initiate a fast-track legislative procedure
to remedy the incompatibility.28 (This is a power the minister would not have
but for the process of judicial review that led to the declaration in the first
place.)
23. See Mauro Cappelletti & John Clarke Adams, Comment, Judicial Review of Legislation:
European Antecedents and Adaptations, 79 Harv. L. Rev. 1207, 1222-23 (1966). There are
further complications in regard to whether the statute declared invalid is deemed to have
been invalid as of the time of its passage.
24. The matter is not clear-cut. In support of the proposition that unconstitutional statutes are
not struck out of the statute book, consider Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428 (2000),
in which the Supreme Court by a majority held that a federal statute (18 U.S.C. ? 3501)
purporting to make voluntary confessions admissible even when there was no Miranda
warning was unconstitutional. The closing words of Justice Scalia's dissent in that case seem
to indicate that legislation that the Supreme Court finds unconstitutional remains available
for judicial reference. Justice Scalia said: "I dissent from today's decision, and, until ? 3501 is
repealed, will continue to apply it in all cases where there has been a sustainable finding that
the defendant's confession was voluntary." Id at 464. A contrary impression may appear
from McCorvey v. Hill, 385 F.3d 846, 849 (5th Cir. 2004), in which the Fifth Circuit held that
the Texas abortion statute at issue in Roe v. Wade must be deemed to have been repealed by
implication. A close reading ofthat case, however, shows that the implicit repeal was held to
have been effected by the Texas statutes regulating abortion after Roe, not by the decision in
Roe itself. (I am grateful to Carol S?nger for this reference.)
25. See Richard H. Fall?n, Jr., Commentary, As-Applied and Facial Challenges and Third-Party
Standing, 113 Harv. L. Rev. 1321,1339-40 (2000).
26. See Stephen Gardbaum, The New Commonwealth Model of Constitutionalism, 49 Am. J. Comp.
L. 707 (2001).
27. Human Rights Act, 1998, c. 42, ? 4(2), (6).
28. Id. ? 10.
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 20o6
A form of even weaker judicial review
much authority. Like their British count
not decline to apply legislation when it vio
the rights set out in the Bill of Rights Ac
find interpretations that avoid the viol
indicated that they may be prepared on
incompatibility on their own initiative,
not have any legal effect on the legislative
There are some intermediate cases. In C
review of legislation by courts, and courts
may decline to apply a national or provinci
of the Canadian Charter of Rights and
(provincial or national) may be couched in
scrutiny-Canadian assemblies may legisl
the Charter.32 In practice, however, th
invoked.33 Thus, in what follows I shall co
29. New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990,1990 S.N
to any enactment (whether passed or made before
Rights), . . . [h]old any provision of the enactme
to be in any way invalid or ineffective; or . .
enactment?by reason only that the provision is i
ofRights.").
30. Id. ? 6 ("Wherever an enactment can be given a meaning that is consistent with the rights
and freedoms contained in this Bill of Rights, that meaning shall be preferred to any other
meaning.").
31. See Moonen v. Film & Literature Bd. of Review, [2000] 2 N.Z.L.R. 9, 22-3 (C.A.).
32. Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being
Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982, ch. 11, ? 33(i)-(2) (U.K.). The full text of the provision
reads:
(1) Parliament or the legislature of a province may expressly declare in an Act of
Parliament or of the legislature, as the case may be, that the Act or a provision thereof
shall operate notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15 of this
Charter.
(2) An Act or a provision of an Act in respect of which a declaration made under this
section is in effect shall have such operation as it would have but for the provision of this
Charter referred to in the declaration.
33. When it has been invoked, it has mostly been in the context of Qu?b?cois politics. See Tsvi
Kahana, The Notwithstanding Mechanism and Public Discussion: Lessons from the Ignored
Practice of Section 33 of the Charter, 44 J. Inst. Pub. Admin. Can. 255 (2001).
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
form of strong judicial review, with its vulnerability to my argument affected
only slightly by the formal availability of the override.34
A second distinction among types of judicial review pays attention to the
place of individual rights in the constitutional system of a society. In the
United States, statutes are scrutinized for their conformity to individual rights
as set out in the Constitution. Rights-oriented judicial review is part and parcel
of general constitutional review, and the courts strike down statutes for
violations of individual rights in exactly the spirit in which they strike down
statutes for violations of federalism or separation of powers principles.35 This
gives American defenses of judicial review a peculiar cast. Though
philosophical defenses of the practice are often couched in terms of the
34? Jeffrey Goldsworthy has suggested that the "notwithstanding" provision provides a
sufficient answer to those of us who worry, on democratic grounds, about the practice of
strong judicial review. Jeffrey Goldsworthy, Judicial Review, Legislative Override, and
Democracy, 38 Wake Forest L. Rev. 451, 454-59 (2003). It matters not, he says, that the
provision is rarely used.
[SJurely that is the electorate's democratic prerogative, which Waldron would be
bound to respect. It would not be open to him to object that an ingenuous
electorate is likely to be deceived by the specious objectivity of constitutionalised
rights, or dazzled by the mystique of the judiciary?by a naive faith in judges'
expert legal skills, superior wisdom, and impartiality. That objection would
reflect precisely the same lack of faith in the electorate's capacity for enlightened
self-government that motivates proponents of constitutionally entrenched rights.
Id. at 456-57. I believe that the real problem is that section 33 requires the legislature to
misrepresent its position on rights. To legislate notwithstanding the Charter is a way of
saying that you do not think Charter rights have the importance that the Charter says they
have. But the characteristic stand-off between courts and legislatures does not involve one
group of people (judges) who think Charter rights are important and another group of
people (legislators) who do not. What it usually involves is groups of people (legislative
majorities and minorities, and judicial majorities and minorities) all of whom think Charter
rights are important, though they disagree about how the relevant rights are to be
understood. Goldsworthy acknowledges this:
When the judiciary ... is expected to disagree with the legislature as to the "true"
meaning and effect of Charter provisions, the legislature cannot ensure that its
view will prevail without appearing to override the Charter itself. And that is
vulnerable to the politically lethal objection that the legislature is openly and self
confessedly subverting constitutional rights.
Id. at 467. However, maybe there is no form of words that can avoid this difficulty. As a
matter of practical politics, the legislature is always somewhat at the mercy of the courts'
public declarations about the meaning of the society's Bill or Charter of Rights. I am grateful
to John Morley for this point.
35. The most famous judicial defense of judicial review, Marbury v. Madison, had nothing to do
with individual rights. It was about Congress's power to appoint and remove justices of the
peace.
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
judiciary's particular adeptness at dealing
reality that argument is subordinate to a
courts must play in upholding the rules of
two defenses are consistent; other times
textualism may seem appropriate for structu
to seem an inappropriate basis for thinking
are embodied in an authoritative text.36 In o
place with regard to a bill of rights that is
the (structural) constitution. Weak judicia
the basis of the Human Rights Act is of thi
judicial review are associated with constituti
cases. But it is important to remember b
structural constraints might not be parti
thinking about rights, and the additional po
rights-oriented judicial review can be pose
review as well. In recent years, for example
States has struck down a number of statu
Supreme Court's vision of federalism.37
country is governed on a quite different
state and central government is concern
eighteenth century, when most of the const
middle of the nineteenth century, when the
modified to any substantial extent. But opin
of state/federal relations should be. The tex
that matter. So it is settled instead by votin
one conception of federalism (which they th
others for another, and whichever side h
prevails. It is not clear that this is an appr
structural terms of association among a free
A third distinction is between a posterio
which takes place in the context of particula
36. See Dworkin, supra note 3, at 11-18 ; Andrei M
x56-57 (rev. 2d ed. 2005).
37. See, e.g., supra note 12.
38. The need for judicial review for patrolling struc
between state and federal legislatures is often c
rights-based limitations on legislatures. People s
review anyway, for federalism reasons. So why no
based judicial review as well?" My analysis of the d
will be pertinent to this sort of hybrid or opportun
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
after a statute has been enacted, and ex ante review of legislation by a
constitutional court specifically set up to conduct an abstract assessment of a
bill in the final stages of its enactment.39 There are questions about how to
understand ex ante review. Something that amounts in effect to a final stage in
a multicameral legislative process, with the court operating like a traditional
senate, is not really judicial review (though the case against empowering an
unelected body in this way may be similar) .40 shall not say much more about
this. For some defenses of judicial review, the a posteriori character of its
exercise - its rootedness in particular cases41 - is important, and I shall
concentrate on that.
A fourth distinction is connected with the third. Judicial review can be
carried out by ordinary courts (as in the Massachusetts case we began with) or
it can be carried out by a specialized constitutional court. This may be relevant
to an argument I will make later: The ability of judges in the regular hierarchy
of courts to reason about rights is exaggerated when so much of the ordinary
discipline of judging distracts their attention from direct consideration of
moral arguments. Perhaps a specialist constitutional court can do better,
though experience suggests that it too may become preoccupied with the
development of its own doctrines and precedents in a way that imposes a
distorting filter on the rights-based reasoning it considers.
II. FOUR ASSUMPTIONS
To focus my argument, and to distinguish the core case in which the
objection to judicial review is at its clearest from non-core cases in which
judicial review might be deemed appropriate as an anomalous provision to deal
with special pathologies, I shall set out some assumptions.42
39- Some systems of the first kind make provision for ex ante advisory opinions in limited
circumstances. For example, in Massachusetts, "[e]ach branch of the legislature, as well as
the governor or the council, shall have authority to require the opinions of the justices of the
supreme judicial court, upon important questions of law, and upon solemn occasions."
Mass. Const, pt. II, ch. Ill, art. II (amended 1964). This procedure was used in the months
following the Goodridge decision, discussed at the beginning of this Essay. In Opinions of the
Justices to the Senate, 802 N.E.2d 565 (Mass. 2004), the Supreme Judicial Court of
Massachusetts held that a legislative provision for civil unions for same-sex couples that also
prohibited discrimination against civilly joined spouses would not be sufficient to avoid the
constitutional objection to the ban on same-sex marriages noted in Goodridge.
40. See Jeremy Waldron, Eisgruber's House of Lords, 37 U.S.F. L. Rev. 89 (2002).
41. See infra Section IV.A.
42. These assumptions are adapted from those set out in Jeremy Waldron, Some Models of
Dialogue Between Judges and Legislators, 23 Sup. Ct. L. Rev. 2d 7, 9-21 (2004).
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
Certain of these assumptions may strike
but I am not trying any sort of subterfuge
these assumptions will be evident as we
core cases, understood as cases in which on
not hold, is freely acknowledged and will
my contention will be that the argument
if any of the conditions fail, the argument
of what I want to combat in this Essay is a
toward the issue of judicial review.44 I full
quickly through my assumptions to fin
American or British society as they unders
core argument altogether. What matter
defended and challenges to it seen off; the
an unfortunate approach. It is better to try
objection, and to see whether it is valid on
examine cases in which, for some reason, i
Let me lay out in summary the four a
imagine a society with (1) democratic insti
order, including a representative legislat
adult suffrage; (2) a set of judicial institut
set up on a nonrepresentative basis to hear
and uphold the rule of law; (3) a commitm
the society and most of its officials to
rights; and (4) persisting, substantial, a
rights (i.e., about what the commitment to
its implications are) among the members o
the idea of rights.
I shall argue that, relative to these ass
ought to settle the disagreements about ri
legislative institutions. If these assumption
disagreements to judicial tribunals f
unconvincing, and there is no need f
legislatures to be second-guessed by cou
decisions by courts to override legislativ
satisfy important criteria of political legiti
assumptions.
43- See infra text accompanying note 136.
44. For a general critique of the "bottom-line" mentality in political philosophy, see Jeremy
Waldron, What Plato Would Allow, in Nomos XXXVII: Theory and Practice 138 (Ian
Shapiro & Judith Wagner DeCew eds., 1995).
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
A. Democratic Institutions
I assume that the society we are considering is a democratic society and
that, like most in the modern Western world, it has struggled through various
forms of monarchy, tyranny, dictatorship, or colonial domination to a situation
in which its laws are made and its public policies are set by the people and their
representatives working through elective institutions. This society has a
broadly democratic political system with universal adult suffrage, and it has a
representative legislature, to which elections are held on a fair and regular
basis.45 I assume that this legislature is a large deliberative body, accustomed to
dealing with difficult issues, including important issues of justice and social
policy. The legislators deliberate and vote on public issues, and the procedures
for lawmaking are elaborate and responsible,46 and incorporate various
safeguards, such as bicameralism,47 robust committee scrutiny, and multiple
levels of consideration, debate, and voting. I assume that these processes
connect both formally (through public hearings and consultation procedures)
and informally with wider debates in the society. Members of the legislature
think of themselves as representatives, in a variety of ways, sometimes making
the interests and opinions of their constituents key to their participation,
sometimes thinking more in terms of virtual representation of interests and
opinions throughout the society as a whole. I assume too that there are political
parties, and that legislators' party affiliations are key to their taking a view that
ranges more broadly than the interests and opinions of their immediate
constituents.
None of this is meant to be controversial; it picks out the way in which
democratic legislatures usually operate. In general, I am assuming that the
democratic institutions are in reasonably good order. They may not be perfect
and there are probably ongoing debates as to how they might be improved. I
assume these debates are informed by a culture of democracy, valuing
responsible deliberation and political equality. The second of these values
45- Thus, the application of my argument to nondemocratic societies, or societies whose
institutions differ radically from these forms, is not a subject discussed in this Essay.
46. See Jeremy Waldron, Legislating with Integrity, 72 Fordham L. Rev. 373 (2003).
47. The assumption of bicameralism might seem problematic. There are in the world a number
of well-functioning unicameral legislatures, most notably in the Scandinavian countries:
Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. But unicameral arrangements can easily exacerbate other
legislative pathologies. For an argument that this has happened in New Zealand to an extent
that may take that country outside the benefit of the argument developed in this Essay, see
Jeremy Waldron, Compared to What??Judicial Activism and the New Zealand Parliament,
2005 N.Z. L.J. 441.
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
political equality -is worth particular emph
procedures, and practices of legislation a
this perspective, so that if there are perce
derogate seriously from the ideal of politi
all the members of the society that this is
that, if need be, the legislature and the el
remedy it. And I assume that the legis
change, either on its own initiative or by r
I belabor these points about a demo
legislative institutions in reasonably good
key to the argument that follows. The ini
to ask the following question: Once we h
what reason can there be for wanting to se
and sometimes override the work that the
hand, I do not want to beg any questions
balance it immediately with the assumptio
also has courts in good working order doing
reasonably well what courts are g
contemplating has what it takes to have a
review can be shown to be appropriate.
One note of caution: When I say that the
order, I am not assuming that the legisla
legislature enacts is by and large good or ju
I assume some of the legislation is just
disagree about which is which), and that th
might conceivably be subject to judicial
nobody is proposing to subject to judicial r
legislative and electoral arrangements b
process values rather than outcome values.
about the sort of reasoning that we would
48. It is sometimes said that elective institutions ar
legislators have an entrenched interest in the st
pathological electoral and legislative arrangemen
which this is most true in the United States ar
dared to intervene?consider the disgracefu
arrangements, for example.) It is patendy false e
1993 the legislature enacted statutes changing th
from a first-past-the-post system to a system of
unsetded existing patterns of incumbency. Se
Electoral Referendum Act 1993,1093 S.N.Z. No.
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
B. Judicial Institutions
I assume that the society we are considering has courts - that is, a well
established and politically independent judiciary, again in reasonably good
working order, set up to hear lawsuits, settle disputes, and uphold the rule of
law. I assume that these institutions are already authorized to engage in judicial
review of executive actions, testing it against statutory and constitutional law.
I assume that, unlike the institutions referred to in the previous Section, the
courts are mostly not elective or representative institutions. By this I mean not
only that judicial office is not (for the most part) an elective office, but also that
the judiciary is not permeated with an ethos of elections, representation, and
electoral accountability in the way that the legislature is. Many defenders of
judicial review regard this as a huge advantage, because it means courts can
deliberate on issues of principle undistracted by popular pressures and
invulnerable to public anger. Sometimes, however, when it is thought
necessary to rebut the democratic case against judicial review, defenders of the
practice will point proudly to states where judges are elected. This happens in
some states in the United States. But even where judges are elected, the
business of the courts is not normally conducted, as the business of the
legislature is, in accordance with an ethos of representation and electoral
accountability.
I am going to assume that, in the society we are considering, courts are
capable of performing the functions that would be assigned to them under a
practice of judicial review. They could review legislation; the question is
whether they should, and if so, whether their determinations should be final
and binding on the representative branches of government. I assume, though,
that if they are assigned this function, they will perform it as courts
characteristically perform their functions. There is an immense law review
literature on the specific character of the judicial process and of the tasks for
which courts do and do not seem institutionally competent.49 I do not want to
delve deeply into that here. As I indicated above, I will assume that we are
dealing with courts that (1) do not act on their own motion or by abstract
reference, but rather respond to particular claims brought by particular
litigants; (2) deal with issues in the context of binary, adversarial presentation;
and (3) refer to and elaborate their own past decisions on matters that seem
relevant to the case at hand. I further assume a familiar hierarchy of courts,
49. See, e.g., Henry M. Hart, Jr. & Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process : Basic Problems in
the Making and Application of Law 640-47 (William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Philip P. Frickey
eds., 1994) ; Lon L. Fuller, The Forms and Limits of Adjudication, 92 Harv. L. Rev. 353 (1978).
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
with provisions for appeal, and with larger multi
or nine judges) addressing cases at the highest
courts being required largely to follow the le
disposition of the matters that come before them.
In some societies, judges are specially and se
societies, they are chosen from the ranks of em
either case, I assume that they have high status
position that insulates them from specific political
assume they are typical of the high-status and w
society. This is important for two reasons. Fir
itself on being largely democratic, I shall assume
that pride and so are likely to be self-conscious a
own activity if they engage in judicial review o
how they exercise such authority.5" Second, altho
least as committed to rights as anyone else in t
other members of the society, judges disagree
meaning and implications of individual and minor
they are subject to my fourth assumption about
this too affects how they exercise powers of judi
powers). Specifically, just like legislators, modes o
developed for multi-judge tribunals whose membe
decision-procedure most often used is simple majo
address the question of whether this is an approp
use.
C. A Commitment to Rights
I assume that there is a strong commitment on the part of most members of
the society we are contemplating to the idea of individual and minority rights.
Although they believe in the pursuit of the general good under some broad
utilitarian conception, and although they believe in majority rule as a rough
general principle for politics, they accept that individuals have certain interests
and are entitled to certain liberties that should not be denied simply because it
would be more convenient for most people to deny them. They believe that
minorities are entitled to a degree of support, recognition, and insulation that
is not necessarily guaranteed by their numbers or by their political weight.
so. See Jesse H. Choper, Judicial Review and the National Political Process (1980)
(discussing the Supreme Court's legitimacy in this context) ; see also Planned Parenthood of
Se. Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 864-69 (1992) (same).
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
The details of the prevalent theory of rights need not detain us here. I
assume that this society-wide commitment to rights involves an awareness of
the worldwide consensus on human rights and of the history of thinking about
rights.5' I assume that this commitment is a living consensus, developing and
evolving as defenders of rights talk to one another about what rights they have
and what those rights imply. I assume that the commitment to rights is not
just lip service and that the members of the society take rights seriously: They
care about them, they keep their own and others' views on rights under
constant consideration and lively debate, and they are alert to issues of rights in
regard to all the social decisions that are canvassed or discussed in their midst.
No doubt there are skeptics about rights in every society, but I assume that
this position is an outlier. Some reject rights as they reject all political morality;
others reject rights because they hold utilitarian, socialist, or other doctrines
that repudiate them for (what purport to be) good reasons of political
morality- e.g., rights are too individualistic or their trumping force
undermines the rational pursuit of efficiency or whatever. But I assume that
general respect for individual and minority rights is a serious part of a broad
consensus in the society, part of the most prevalent body of political opinion,
and certainly part of the official ideology.
To make this third assumption more concrete, we may assume also that the
society cherishes rights to an extent that has led to the adoption of an official
written bill or declaration of rights of the familiar kind. I shall refer to this
throughout as the "Bill of Rights" of the society concerned. This is supposed to
correspond to, for example, the rights provisions of the U.S. Constitution and
its amendments, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the European
Convention on Human Rights (as incorporated, say, into British law in the
Human Rights Act), or the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Those familiar
with the last of these examples will recognize that I am making no assumption
that the Bill of Rights is entrenched or part of a written constitution. I want to
leave that open. All I assume at this stage is that a Bill of Rights has been
enacted to embody the society's commitment to rights. Thus, it may have been
enacted sometime in the past on the society's own initiative, or it may be the
product of imitation, or it may be a fulfillment of the country's external
obligations under human rights law.
51. This is so even if this awareness does not involve much more than a vague understanding
that human rights conventions have become ascendant in the world since 1945, and that
their history reaches back to the sort of conceptions of natural right alluded to in documents
such as the 1776 Declaration of Independence and the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights
of Man and the Citizen.
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
Readers may be puzzled by these assumptions
to be arguing against interest, stacking the deck
assuming a Bill of Rights. On the other hand,
sneaky is in the offing. Readers may be aware t
that judicial review should not be understood
defenders of rights and opponents of rights but
view of rights and another view of rights.52
response to both these observations is that ther
cultural and at the institutional level between a co
written commitment to rights) and any partic
judicial review of legislation) that such a commitm
hearing opponents of judicial review denigrated
best response is to erect the case against judici
strong and pervasive commitment to rights.
This third assumption defines as non-core c
commitment to rights is tenuous and fragile. It m
proceed in this way, for defenders of judicial rev
we need the practice to help shore up our com
participants in a new democracy to value righ
minorities that might not be forthcoming in a pu
arguments are interesting, but they do not go to
made for judicial review in countries like the Unit
In those countries, we are told that judicial rev
institutionalizing or administering a society's exis
These formulations should be taken at face value,
with my third assumption.53
D. Disagreement About Rights
My final and crucial assumption is that the co
exempt from the incidence of general disagree
issues, which we find in modern liberal societi
52. See Waldron, A Right-Based Critique, supra note 14, at 28-
53. My approach here is similar to that of John Rawls. I am
define something like a well-ordered society with a publi
e.g., John Rawls, Political Liberalism 35-36 (1993
Liberalism] . Rawls seems to assume that judicial review
even a well-ordered society. Id. at 165-66, 233-40; see
Justice 195-99, 228-31 (1971) [hereinafter Rawls, A Theo
to show that he is wrong about that.
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
substantial dissensus as to what rights there are and what they amount to.
Some of these disagreements are apparent at a philosophical level (e.g.,
whether socioeconomic rights should be included in the Bill of Rights), some
become apparent when we try to relate abstract principles of right to particular
legislative proposals (e.g., whether the free exercise of religion demands
exemptions from otherwise generally applicable laws), and some become
apparent only in the context of hard individual cases (e.g., how much tolerance
for dissident speech there should be in a time of national emergency).
I assume that the rights-disagreements are mostly not issues of
interpretation in a narrow legalistic sense. They may present themselves in the
first instance as issues of interpretation, but they raise questions of
considerable practical moment for the political community. Elsewhere I have
referred to these as "watershed" issues of rights.54 They are major issues of
political philosophy with significant ramifications for the lives of many people.
Moreover, I assume that they are not idiosyncratic to the society in which they
arise. They define major choices that any modern society must face, choices
that are reasonably well understood in the context of existing moral and
political debates, choices that are focal points of moral and political
disagreement in many societies. Examples spring quickly to mind: abortion,
affirmative action, the legitimacy of government redistribution or interference
in the marketplace, the rights of criminal suspects, the precise meaning of
religious toleration, minority cultural rights, the regulation of speech and
spending in electoral campaigns, and so on.
As these examples suggest, disagreements about rights are often about
central applications, not just marginal applications. Because I am already
assuming a general commitment to rights, it is tempting to infer that that
general commitment covers the core of each right and that the right only
becomes controversial at the outer reaches of its application. That is a mistake.
A commitment to rights can be wholehearted and sincere even while watershed
cases remain controversial. For example, two people who disagree about
whether restrictions on racist hate speech are acceptable may both accept that
the right to free speech is key to thinking through the issue and they may both
accept also that the case they disagree about is a central rather than marginal
issue relative to that right. What this shows, perhaps, is that they have
different conceptions of the right,"5 but that is no reason to doubt the sincerity
of their adherence to it.
54- See Waldron, Judicial Power and Popular Sovereignty, supra note 14, at 198.
55. For a discussion of the distinction between the concept of a right and various conceptions of
it, see Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously 134-36 (1977).
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
Generally speaking, the fact that people
mean that there must be one party to the
rights seriously. No doubt some posi
disingenuously or ignorantly by scoundrels
moral illiterates (who misunderstand thei
assume that in most cases disagreement is
faith. The issues involved are serious issue
expect that there would be consensus. In othe
John Rawls's "burdens of judgment," but
apply the doctrine) to issues of the right as w
reasonable to expect that people's views o
rights will always converge to consensus.
unrealistic ... to suppose that all our differen
solely in ignorance and perversity, or else in
economic gain."57
The assumption of disagreement has nothin
One can recognize the existence of disagre
justice - one can even acknowledge that such
political purposes, irresolvable -without st
there is no fact of the matter about the issue
The recognition of disagreement is perfect
truth of the matter about rights and the
assuming that our condition is not one in
discloses itself in ways that are not reasonabl
If there is a Bill of Rights, I assume that it
the issues at stake in the disagreements.
paragraphs back. In the United States, i
provisions of the Bill of Rights have a bearin
be resolved and that the provisions of the
determine a resolution of the issue in a way
Thus, I assume that the extent of these disag
devising abstract formulations. Disagreement
56. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, supra note 53,
judgment"). Rawls argues that "many of our most
conditions where it is not to be expected that con
reason, even after free discussion, will arrive at
argument applying this to the right as well as th
149-63.
57. Rawls, Political Liberalism, supra note 53, at 58.
58. See Waldron, The Irrelevance of Moral Objectivity, supra note 19, at 182.
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
of a Bill of Rights.59 But the disagreements remain unresolved, leaving us in a
situation in which -when an issue about a possible rights-violation arises - it is
beyond dispute that a Bill of Rights provision bears on the matter, but what its
bearing is and whether it prohibits (or should limit the application of) the
legislative provision that is called into question remains a matter of dispute
among reasonable people.6"
This is not to deny that arguments can be made that seem conclusive -at
least to those who make them -as to the bearing of the Bill of Rights on the
issue in question. If judicial review is set up in the society, then lawyers will
argue about these issues using both the text and the gravitational force of the
text of the Bill of Rights. In fact, lawyers will have a field day. Each side to each
of the disagreements will claim that its position can be read into the bland
commitments of the Bill of Rights if only those texts are read generously (or
narrowly) enough. Neither will be prepared to acknowledge publicly that
which I am assuming now will be obvious: that the bland rhetoric of the Bill of
Rights was designed simply to finesse the real and reasonable disagreements
that are inevitable among people who take rights seriously for long enough to
see such a Bill enacted. Instead of encouraging us to confront these
disagreements directly, judicial review is likely to lead to their being framed as
questions of interpretation of those bland formulations. Whether that is a
desirable context in which to deliberate about the moral issues that they pose is
one of the things we shall consider in Part V.
111. THE FORM OF THE ARGUMENT
So these are our assumptions. What do we do with the situation they
define? The members of the community are committed to rights, but they
disagree about rights. Most issues of rights are in need of settlement. We need
settlement not so much to dispose of the issue -nothing can do that6' -but to
provide a basis for common action when action is necessary. Now, there are all
59- See Thomas Christiano, Waldron on Law and Disagreement, 19 Law & Phil. 513, 537 (2000).
60. Once again, I am not saying that the provisions in the Bill of Rights cover the central cases,
with disagreement confined to the margins of their application. The provisions are usually
vague and abstract, leaving open the possibility that even when there are uncontroversial
cases, people still might be using the same abstract formula to cover different substantive
approaches to the right?and we should still say that they both take the right seriously.
61. Cf. Jon Stewart et al., America (The Book) : A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
90 (2004) (discussing Roe v. Wade and noting that "[t]he Court rules that the right to
privacy protects a woman's decision to have an abortion and the fetus is not a person with
constitutional rights, thus ending all debate on this once-controversial issue").
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
sorts of issues on which we do not ne
transubstantiation, the meaning of Hamlet,
life - and that is fortunate, because there is l
areas. Unfortunately, on issues of rights,
there is little prospect of agreement either.
make the fact of disagreement evaporate; rat
for action has to be forged in the heat of our
In the real world, the need for settlemen
arena. We legislate in certain areas, and the l
rights. Those issues may not be facially p
legislation may be on marriage formali
campaign finance reform, or the historic pre
happens is that somebody notices that its app
of rights and it is in connection with that is
according to its terms or not? -that the need
An argument, which I respect, for some
goes as follows: It may not always be easy fo
rights are embedded in a legislative proposal
always be easy for them to envisage what iss
subsequent application. So it is useful to have
to bring these issues to everyone's attent
argument for weak judicial review only, not f
which the abstract question of right that h
way that a court deems appropriate. It is an
system in the United Kingdom, in which a c
there is an important question of rights a
argument for the arrangement we find in
whereby the attorney general has the nonpar
proposals and publicly identify any issues of
arrangement is a kind of institutionalization
that was embodied in assumption three above
62. See supra text accompanying notes 26-28.
63. Cf. New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, 1990
introduced into the House of Representatives, th
practicable after the introduction of the Bill,?br
Representatives any provision in the Bill that appe
rights and freedoms contained in this Bill of Righ
exercise of this power, see Grant Huscroft, 75 the D
Human Rights? The Attorney-General and Pre-Legislat
Zealand Bul of Rights, 14 Pub. L. Rev. 109 (2003).
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
Let us assume, for now, that the legislature is broadly aware of the issues of
rights that a given bill gives rise to and that, having deliberated on the matter,
it resolves - through debate and voting - to settle those issues in a particular
way. The legislature takes sides on one or more of the disagreements we
imagined in assumption four. The question we face is whether that resolution
of the legislature should be dispositive or whether there is reason to have it
second-guessed and perhaps overruled by the judiciary.
How should we answer this question? I have heard people say that the
decision-rule should be this: The legislature's decision stands, except when it
violates rights. But clearly this will not do. We are assuming that the members
of the society disagree about whether a given legislative proposal violates
rights. We need a way of resolving that disagreement. The point is as old as
Hobbes: We must set up a decision-procedure whose operation will settle, not
reignite, the controversies whose existence called for a decision-procedure in
the first place.64 This means that even though the members of the society we
are imagining disagree about rights, they need to share a theory of legitimacy
for the decision-procedure that is to settle their disagreements. So, in thinking
about the reasons for setting up such a procedure, we should think about
reasons that can be subscribed to by people on both sides of any one of these
disagreements.65
I am presenting the need for legitimate decision-procedures as a response
to the problem of moral disagreement. But I have heard philosophers say that
because disagreement is pervasive in politics, we should not let it throw us off
our stride. Because we disagree as much about legitimate decision-procedures
as we do about the justification of outcomes, and because (on my own account)
it is plain that we have to take a stand on something- namely, decision
procedures -despite such disagreement, why can't we just take a stand on the
issue of substance and be done with it?66 The response to this is that we must
go to the issue of legitimacy whether we are likely to find disagreement there or
64. Cf. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 123 (Richard Tuck ed., 1996) (1651).
65. Another way of saying this is that a normative political theory needs to include more than
just a basis for justifying certain decisions on their merits. It needs to be more than, say, a
theory of justice or a theory of the general good. It also has to address the normative issue of
the legitimacy of the decision-procedures that are used to make political decisions in the face
of disagreement. A normative political theory that does not do that is seriously incomplete.
66. Christiano phrases the point in terms of a regress of procedures: "We can expect
disagreement at every stage, if Waldron is right; so if we must have recourse to a higher
order procedure to resolve each dispute as it arises, then we will be unable to stop the
regress of procedures." Christiano, supra note 59, at 521. But Christiano makes no attempt to
show that this is a vicious regress. For discussion of the regress, see Waldron, supra note
14, at 298-301.
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL '15:1346 2006
not. For one thing, we do need to design
consider reasons relevant to that design. For
reasons relating to legitimacy-e.g., fairn
because of disagreement and do not arise
question of decision-procedures. Even if w
no choice but to consider them. The fact
not a proper ground for pushing them to o
one side or the other in the prior (or substa
No decision-procedure will be perfec
unreviewable legislation or whether it is
sometimes come to the wrong decision, bet
them.67 This is a fact of life in politics. Ev
sometimes be a dissonance between what th
what they take to be the choice yielded by
as legitimate. Richard Wollheim called
democracy,"68 because it allows one and the
not to be enacted, where A is the policy h
enacted, because A is the policy chosen b
wrong to ascribe this paradox to democr
theory of politics affecting any political the
what ought to be done with an account o
when there is disagreement about what ough
With that caution in mind, what are the r
account in designing or evaluating a d
disagreements about rights? Two sorts of
call them "outcome-related" and "process
both relevant to the issue of decision-proce
Process-related reasons are reasons for ins
participate in making, a given decisio
considerations about the appropriate outco
say that a parent has the right to make t
should be disciplined for a given infracti
street or another passenger on the bus to m
67. I have heard people say that the errors are alway
The legislature may actually violate rights, whereas
interfere to protect them. This is a mistake. Cour
may sometimes violate rights by striking down a
discuss this further at the end of Part IV.
68. Richard Wollheim, A Paradox in the Theory o
Society 71 (Peter Laslett & W.G. Runciman eds., 2
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
while reserving judgment on whether the child should be disciplined. Indeed,
we may say that even though we think the passer-by is likely to make a better
decision on this than the parent. In politics, the most familiar process-related
reasons are those based on political equality and the democratic right to vote,
the right to have one's voice counted even when others disagree with what one
says.
Outcome-related reasons, by contrast, are reasons for designing the
decision-procedure in a way that will ensure the appropriate outcome (i.e., a
good, just, or right decision). Our subject matter is disagreements about rights.
Because rights are important, it is likewise important that we get them right
and so we must take outcome-related reasons very seriously indeed. Wrong
answers may be tolerable in matters of policy; but on matters of principle, if
the wrong answer is given, then rights will be violated. The members of the
society we are imagining understand how important it is to avoid such
outcomes or minimize them to the extent they can.
Of course, it may not be easy to identify outcome-related reasons that
people on opposing sides of rights-disagreements can agree upon. As I said
earlier,69 the design of a decision-procedure must be independent of the
particular disagreement it is supposed to settle; it is no good if it simply
reignites it. So we must avoid outcome-related reasons that aim specifically at
particular controversial outcomes - e.g., favoring a decision-procedure because
it is more likely to generate a pro-choice than a pro-life outcome. A decision
procedure chosen on this basis will hardly command the allegiance of the pro
life advocates. Given the disagreement, the whole point here is to set up a
procedure for generating settlements in a way that can be recognized as
legitimate on both sides.
It is possible, however, to garner outcome-related reasons on a more
modest basis. Instead of saying (in a question-begging way) that we should
choose those political procedures that are most likely to yield a particular
controversial set of rights, we might say instead that we should choose political
procedures that are most likely to get at the truth about rights, whatever that
truth turns out to be. As Aileen Kavanagh puts it:
[W]e do not need a precise account of what rights we have and how
they should be interpreted in order to make some instrumentalist [i.e.,
outcome-related] claims. Many instrumentalist arguments are not
based on knowledge of the content of any particular rights. Rather,
they are based on general institutional considerations about the way in
69. See supra text accompanying note 64.
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
which legislatures make decisions in compa
which influence their decision and the wa
bring their claims in either forum.70
Reasons of this kind deserve to be taken s
further and suggested that these kinds of out
reasons worth considering.71 This dogmatis
importance of the issues at stake. The outcom
important. But there are also all sorts of i
outcome-related that we should not hesitate
about the design of procedures for the res
rights. I have given a few examples already
principle of self-determination. There i
disagreements be settled for each society within
than by diktat from outside (e.g., by a neighb
colonial power). Some think this is not a co
national self-determination and sovereignty
international authority on questions of human r
some importance. Raz has paid insufficient att
outcome-related reasons are very important
about rights, reasons of other kinds may be im
Once we see that there are reasons of all sort
their normative character because this wil
another. The term "outcome-related" sounds
consequences we are trying to avoid are rights
some of the deontological urgency associate
quite as compelling as the principle that pr
designers of a decision-procedure are indirectly
violations that might be involved in an exer
responsibility is still a rights-based responsibi
in this regard.73
70. Aileen Kavanagh, Participation and Judicial Review: A
451,466 (2003).
71. J. Raz, Disagreement in Politics, 43 Am. J. Juris. 25
of Justice, supra note 53, at 230 ("The fundamental c
the justice of its likely results.").
72. See, e.g., Louis Henkin, That "S" Word: Sovereig
Rights, Et Cetera, Address at Fordham Universit
Distinguished Lecture Series (Feb. 23,1999), in 68 Fo
73. For the idea of various waves of duty being gener
Waldron, Rights in Conflict, 99 Ethics 503,509-12 (19
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
What about the normative character of the process-related reasons?
Process-related reasons are often matters of deontological urgency also. Ronald
Dworkin, I think, misstates the character of participatory reasons when he
refers to them as " [t]he participatory consequences of a political process."74 He
suggests that allowing individual citizens the opportunity to play a part in the
community's political decisionmaking has a consequence - a good
consequence -which is that it confirms their equal membership or standing in
the community. It reassures them that they are regarded by others as persons
whose opinions and choices have value. Allowing people to participate also has
the good consequence of helping citizens to identify with the results of political
decisions and to view those decisions as in some sense theirs, with good knock
on effects for legitimacy (in the sociologist's sense of that word).7 All this is no
doubt important. But it has the flavor of a headmaster noting the advantages
that may accrue from giving his pupils a say in educational affairs through a
school council. Dworkin's account radically underestimates the notion of a right
to participate, the imperative that one be treated as an equal so far as a society's
decisionmaking is concerned, the sense of principle that is at stake when
someone asks indignantly, "How dare they exclude my say-disenfranchise
me -from this decision, which affects me and to which I am subject?"
So, how do we weigh these process-related and outcome-related
considerations? We face the familiar problem of trying to maximize the value
of two variables, like asking someone to buy the fastest car at the lowest price.
There are various ways we can set up the question. We could ask: "What
method is most likely to get at the truth about rights, while at the same time
adequately respecting the equal claim to be heard of the voices of those
affected?"76 Or we could ask: "What method best respects the equal claim to be
heard of the voices of those affected, while at the same time being reasonably
likely to get at the truth about rights?" I think I can cut through this Gordian
knot. What I will argue, in Part IV, is that the outcome-related reasons are at
best inconclusive. They are important, but they do not (as is commonly
thought) establish anything like a clear case for judicial review. The process
related reasons, however, are quite one-sided. They operate mainly to discredit
judicial review while leaving legislative decisionmaking unscathed. Thus, it
74- Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality 187
(2000).
75. These summary formulations of Dworkin's view are adapted from Kavanagh, supra note 70,
at 458-59.
76. This is how the question is stated in Frank I. Michelman, Brennan and Democracy 59
60 (1999).
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
seems to me the legislative side wins on eit
And that will be the core of the case against j
IV. OUTCOME-RELATED REASONS
According to Raz, "[a] natural way to proceed is to assume that the
enforcement of fundamental rights should be entrusted to whichever political
decision-procedure is, in the circumstances of the time and place, most likely to
enforce them well, with the fewest adverse side effects."77 I guess the discussion
at this point ought to be continuous with the broader debate about the
institutional competence of courts, initiated by the legal process school.8
Courts are good at deciding some issues and not others. Technically, we use
the term "rights" to denote the issues that courts characteristically decide,
because a plaintiff has to state a claim of right to be heard in a court at all. But
as Lon Fuller observed, it does not follow that courts are therefore the
appropriate forum for dealing with claims of right in the less technical sense
under consideration here.79 Some claims of right have the character of the sort
of binary issue that courts might be competent to address; others have a
multifaceted character that has usually been regarded as inappropriate for
decision in a judicial structure. This matter bears further consideration. I will
not say much more about it now, but will turn instead to the more specific
claims that are made about the competence of courts and legislatures on the
important moral issues that are the subject of this Essay.
It is tempting to associate outcome-related reasons with the case for judicial
review (and process-related reasons with the case against it). This is a mistake.
It is true that many of the more important process-related reasons are
participatory and therefore favor elective or representative institutions. But it
does not follow that all or most outcome-related reasons argue the other way.
Outcome-related reasons, as we shall see, cut in both directions. There are
things about legislatures that sometimes make them vulnerable to the sorts of
pressures that rights are supposed to guard against; but there are also things
about courts that make it difficult for them to grapple directly with the moral
issues that rights-disagreements present.
Raz acknowledges that outcome-related reasons may weigh on both sides.
He argues in familiar fashion that
77- Raz, supra note 71, at 45.
78. See Hart & Sacks, supra note 49, at 640-47.
79. Fuller, supra note 49, at 368-70.
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
[i]n many countries there are ample reasons to suspect that members of
the legislature are moved by sectarian interests to such a degree that
they are not likely even to attempt to establish what rights (some)
people have.... We may know that certain factors are likely to cloud
people's judgments. They may be, for example, liable to be biased in
their own interest. We may therefore prefer a procedure in which those
charged with a decision are not affected, or not directly affected, by
their own decision. There are other factors known to bias judgment,
and their nature and presence can be established even without
knowledge of the content of the rights concerned.8"
Now, in considering a charge like this, we have to ask about its
compatibility with our third assumption: Is this sort of sectarian prejudice
typical of legislatures in all societies? Or should we associate it with the non
core case of a society whose members are largely indifferent to rights? I shall
say more about this in Part VII.8i But even taken at face value, Raz's argument
is not univocal in its tendency. The same sectarian pressures often explain
judicial neglect of rights as well. We have seen this in the United States in cases
as diverse as Korematsu, Schenck, Dred Scott, and Prigg.2 More recently,
Laurence Tribe (usually a stalwart defender of judicial review) observed that in
the panic that afflicted America after 9/11, "it would be a terrible mistake for
those who worry about civil rights and liberties to pin too much hope on the
judiciary in times of crisis."83
In any case, Raz acknowledges that outcome-related reasons also argue in
the opposite direction:
Sometimes ... there are reasons for thinking that those whose interests
are not going to be affected by a decision are unlikely to try honestly to
80. Raz, supra note 71, at 46.
81. See infra text accompanying notes 137-141. This is where I will deal with the claim (for non
core cases) that judges who sympathize with minority rights are in a better position to resist
popular prejudice than are legislators who sympathize with minority rights.
82. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944) (refusing to protect citizens of Japanese
descent from internment during the Second World War) ; Schenck v. United States, 249
U.S. 47 (1919) (holding that criticizing conscription during the First World War was like
shouting fire in a crowded theater); Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 425-27
(1857); Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. (16 Pet.) 539, 612 (1842) (striking down state
legislation that sought to protect African-Americans from slave-catchers).
83. Laurence Tribe, Trial by Fury: Why Congress Must Curb Bush's Military Courts, New
Republic, Dec. 10, 2001, at 18,19; see also Ronald Dworkin, The Threat to Patriotism, N.Y.
Rev. Books, Feb. 28, 2002, at 44,46-47 (noting courts' past tolerance of rights-violations in
times of crisis).
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
find out what is just in the circumst
unable to appreciate the plight of clas
to the same class oneself, and therefo
decision to those not affected by it, it s
so affected.Y
Legislatures are set up with structures of representation precisely in order to
foster this sense of appreciation.
It is sometimes suggested that structures of democratic participation take
no cognizance at all of the independent importance of securing appropriate
outcomes - they just blindly empower the majority. This is nonsense. All
democracies limit the franchise in various ways in order to secure a modicum of
mature judgment at the polls. They exclude children from voting, for example,
even though children are affected by the decisions under consideration.
Moreover, legislatures are constituted in a way that ensures that information
about the tolerability of various options to different sections of the society is
fed into the decision-process. And decisions are usually made in the context of
bicameral institutions, so that each legislative proposal has to secure majority
support in each of two houses on slightdy different elective schedules.85
Furthermore, systems with weak judicial review or no judicial review
sometimes make specific provision in the legislative process for issues of rights
to be highlighted.86 Specific provision is made in most democracies for
carefully orchestrated debate around election time, as well as a whole array of
connections between formal debate in the legislature and informal debate and
accumulation of information outside the legislature. All these are outcome
related adjustments to democratic procedures. What we see, on the
participatory side, is not what Rawls called a claim of pure procedural justice,
but something like imperfect procedural justice.87
In general, what I notice when I read outcome-related arguments in favor
of judicial review is that people assume that an outcome-related case must be
84. Raz, supra note 71, at 46.
85. Some bicameral systems, like the United Kingdom, have an unelected upper house and
provisions (in the Parliament Acts and in some of the conventions of the British
Constitution) that allow the lower house to prevail (eventually) in the event of conflict.
86. See supra note 63 and accompanying text.
87. See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, supra note 53, at 84-85. We speak of pure procedural
justice when we want to indicate that there is nothing more to the justice of the outcome
than the fact that it was arrived at by scrupulously following a just procedure. We speak of
imperfect procedural justice when we want to convey the point that a given outcome must
be judged on its merits as well as on the basis of the procedure that yielded it.
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
able to be made in favor of courts, if only because the most familiar arguments
against judicial review are non-outcome-related. People strain to associate
outcome-related reasons with the judiciary, and in so doing they often peddle a
quite unrealistic picture of what judicial decisionmaking is like.88 Opponents of
judicial review are often accused of adopting a naively optimistic view of
legislatures. But sometimes we do this deliberately, matching one optimistic
picture with another in the face of the refusal of the defenders of courts to give
a realistic account of what happens there.89
In the remainder of this Part, I want to consider in more detail three
outcome-related advantages that are sometimes claimed for courts (a) that
issues of rights are presented to courts in the context of specific cases; (b) that
courts' approach to issues of rights is oriented to the text of a Bill of Rights;
and (c) that reasoning and reason-giving play a prominent role in judicial
deliberation. These are said to weigh in favor of judicial review. On all three
counts, however, I shall argue that there are important outcome-related defects
in the way courts approach rights and important outcome-related advantages
on the side of legislatures.
A. Orientation to Particular Cases
People sometimes argue that the wonderful thing about judicial reasoning
on rights (as opposed to legislative reasoning on rights) is that issues of rights
present themselves to judges in the form of flesh-and-blood individual
situations. Rights, after all, are individual rights, and it helps focus the mind to
see how an individual is affected by a piece of legislation. As Michael Moore
puts the point, "judges are better positioned for . . . moral insight than are
legislatures because judges have moral thought experiments presented to them
everyday [sic] with the kind of detail and concrete personal involvement
needed for moral insight."90
But this is mostly a myth. By the time cases reach the high appellate levels
we are mostly talking about in our disputes about judicial review, almost all
trace of the original flesh-and-blood right-holders has vanished, and argument
88. For a general critique of arguments that associate judicial review with careful moral
deliberation among, for example, Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, see Kramer, supra
note 11, at 240. Kramer gives a fine description of the way in which Justices' political
agendas, and the phalanxes of ideologically motivated clerks in the various chambers,
interfere with anything that could be recognized as meaningful coll?gial deliberation.
89. See Jeremy Waldron, The Dignity of Legislation 2 (1999).
90. Michael S. Moore, Law as a Functional Kind, in Natural Law Theory, supra note 19, at 188,
230. For a response, see Waldron, Moral Truth and Judicial Review, supra note 19, at 83-88.
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 20o6
such as it is revolves around the abstract issue
or petitioners are selected by advocacy groups
abstract characteristics that the groups want t
public policy argument. The particular idiosyn
have usually dropped out of sight by the
addresses the issue, and the Court almost alwa
terms.91
The process of legislation is open to consideration of individual cases,
through lobbying, in hearings, and in debate. Indeed, there is a tendency these
days to initiate legislation on the basis of notorious individual cases -Megan's
Law, for example.92 Hard cases make bad law, it is sometimes said. To the
extent that this is true, it seems to me that legislatures are much better
positioned to mount an assessment of the significance of an individual case in
relation to a general issue of rights that affects millions and affects them in
many different ways.93
B. Orientation to the Text of a Bill ofRights
We are imagining a society with a Bill of Rights, and if there is to be
judicial review of legislation, it will presumably center on the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights, we have assumed, has been adopted in the society pursuant
to members' shared commitment to the idea of individual and minority rights
notwithstanding the fact that they disagree about what these rights are and
what they entail. Now, when rights-disagreements erupt in regard to
91. See Sarah Weddington, Roe v. Wade: Past and Future, Address at Suffolk University Law
School, The Donahue Lecture Series (Dec. 7, 1989), in 24 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 601, 602-03
(1990).
92. Megan's Law, which created a register of sex offenders, was enacted in New Jersey in 1994,
1994 N.J. Laws 1152 (codified at N.J. Stat. Ann. ?? 2C:7-i to 7-11 (2005)), after Megan
Nicole Kanka was raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender. There is also now a
Federal Megan's Law. 42 U.S.C. ? 14071 (2000). For a description of the enactment of this
legislation, see Daniel M. Filler, Making the Case for Megan's Law: A Study in Legislative
Rhetoric, 76 Ind. L.J. 315 (2001).
93. See Eisgruber, supra note 13, at 173 ("Judges take up constitutional issues in the course of
deciding controversies between particular parties. As a result, those issues come to them in a
way that is incomplete .... Not all interested persons will have standing to appear before
the court. Judges receive evidence and hear arguments from only a limited number of
parties. ... As a result, judges may not have the information necessary to gain a
comprehensive perspective on the fairness of an entire social, political, or economic
system."). Eisgruber concludes from this that it is probably unwise for judges to attempt to
address issues that turn on what he calls "comprehensive" moral principles. Id. at 165, 171,
173.
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
legislation, there is a question about the role that the established Bill of Rights
should play in the decision-process in which the issue is posed. From an
outcome-related point of view, is it a good idea or a bad idea that rights
disagreements be fought out in relation to the terms of a Bill of Rights?
One reason for thinking it is a good idea is that the written formulations of
the Bill of Rights can help disputants focus on the abstract rights-issues at
stake. But there are powerful reasons on the other side. The forms of words
used in the Bill of Rights will not have been chosen with rights-disagreements
in mind. Or, if they were, they will have been chosen in order to finesse the
disagreements about rights that existed at the time the Bill of Rights was set
up. Their platitudes may be exactly the wrong formulations to focus clear
headed, responsible, and good faith explorations of rights-disagreements.
The written formulations of a Bill of Rights also tend to encourage a certain
rigid textual formalism.94 A legal right that finds protection in a Bill of Rights
finds it under the auspices of some canonical form of words in which the
provisions of the Bill are enunciated. One lesson of American constitutional
experience is that the words of each provision tend to take on a life of their
own, becoming the obsessive catchphrase for expressing everything one might
want to say about the right in question. This may be less of a danger in a
system of legislative supremacy, because legislators can pose the issue for
themselves if they like without reference to the Bill of Rights' formulations.
But it is part of the modus operandi of courts to seek textual havens for their
reasoning, and they will certainly tend to orient themselves to the text of the
Bill of Rights in a rather obsessive way.
At the very least, courts will tend to be distracted in their arguments about
rights by side arguments about how a text like the Bill of Rights is best
approached by judges. American experience bears this out: The proportion of
argument about theories of interpretation to direct argument about the moral
issues is skewed in most judicial opinions in a way that no one who thinks the
issues themselves are important can possibly regard as satisfactory. This is
partly because the legitimacy of judicial review is itself so problematic. Because
judges (like the rest of us) are concerned about the legitimacy of a process that
permits them to decide these issues, they cling to their authorizing texts and
debate their interpretation rather than venturing out to discuss moral reasons
directly.95
94. This is an argument I developed in Waldron, A Right-Based Critique, supra note 14.
95. See Tushnet, supra note 11, at 60 ("Courts may design some doctrines to reflect their sense
of their own limited abilities, not to reflect direcdy substantive constitutional values.").
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
One final point. The text of a Bill of Right
not only by what it includes but also by wha
a given society disagree about whether the B
positive (socioeconomic) as well as negative (li
positive rights should have been included ma
distorts moral reasoning by excluding them.
this omission just leads to a possible failur
which review would be appropriate, but it
review as such. But that's too simple. A failu
alter (or distort) judges' understanding of th
may give more weight to property rights or
they would if property and freedom of cont
welfare rights. And giving them greater wei
statutes that ought not to be struck down- s
the deficiency and implement by legislation
in the formulations of the Bill of Rights.
C. Stating Reasons
It is often thought that the great advantag
issues of individual rights is the explicit rea
with it. Courts give reasons for their decisio
of taking seriously what is at stake, whereas
false contrast. Legislators give reasons for
reasons are given in what we call debate and
the Congressional Record. The difference i
study of the reasons that judges give; they
legislative reasoning (though they will occasi
purposes).
Perhaps this argument is not really about the presence or absence of
reason-giving, but rather about its quality. In my view, however, the reasons
that courts tend to give when they are exercising powers of judicial review of
legislation are seldom the reasons that would be canvassed in a full deliberative
discussion, and the process of searching for, citing, assessing, and comparing
96. See Jackson v. City of Joliet, 715 F.2d 1200,1203 (7th Cir. 1983) (Posner, J.) (observing that
the American constitutional scheme "is a charter of negative rather than positive liberties',) ;
cf. Mark Tushnet, An Essay on Rights, 62 Tex. L. Rev. 1363, 1393-94 (1984) ("We could of
course have a different Constitution.... One can argue that the party of humanity ought to
struggle to reformulate the rhetoric of rights so that Judge Posner's description would no
longer seem natural and perhaps would even seem strained.").
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
the weight of such reasons is quite different for courts than for an ideal political
deliberator. Partly this is the point mentioned earlier- that the reasons will be
oriented toward the terminology of the Bill of Rights. If one is lucky enough to
have a fine and up-to-date Bill of Rights, then there may be some congruence
between judicial reason-giving and the reason-giving we would look for in
fully rational, moral, or political deliberation. But if one has an antiquated
constitution, two or three hundred years old, then the alleged reason-giving is
likely to be artificial and distorted. In the United States, what is called "reason
giving" is usually an attempt to connect the decision the court is facing with
some antique piece of ill-thought-through eighteenth- or nineteenth-century
prose. (For example, is an argument about whether "substantive due process"
is an oxymoron the best framework for thinking about labor law or, for that
matter, abortion rights?)
Courts' reason-giving also involves attempts to construct desperate
analogies or disanalogies between the present decision they face and other
decisions that happen to have come before them (and in which they were
engaged in similar contortions). There is laborious discussion of precedent,
even though it is acknowledged at the highest levels of adjudication that
precedent does not settle the matter.97 (So there is also laborious discussion of
the circumstances in which precedent should or shouldn't be overridden.98)
And all the time, the real issues at stake in the good faith disagreement about
rights get pushed to the margins. They usually take up only a paragraph or two
of the twenty pages or more devoted to an opinion, and even then the issues
are seldom addressed directly. In the Supreme Court's fifty-page opinion in
Roe v. Wade, for example, there are but a couple of paragraphs dealing with the
moral importance of reproductive rights in relation to privacy, and the few
paragraphs addressed to the other moral issue at stake- the rights-status of the
fetus - are mostly taken up with showing the diversity of opinions on the
issue.99 Read those paragraphs: The result may be appealing, but the
"reasoning" is thread-bare.
I actually think there is a good reason for this. Courts are concerned about
the legitimacy of their decisionmaking and so they focus their "reason-giving"
97? See, e.g., Henry Paul Monaghan, Stare Decisis and Constitutional Adjudication, 88 Colum. L.
Rev. 723 (1988).
98. See, e.g., Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 854-69 (1992) (discussing the
circumstances in which constitutional precedents may be overturned).
99. There is a tremendous amount of legal and social history in the opinion, but only a few
pages address the actual moral issues at stake. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 153-55 (*973)
(discussing privacy and the importance of reproductive rights); id. at 159-62 (discussing the
alleged rights or personality of the fetus).
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
on facts that tend to show that they are leg
statute, or precedent- to make the decision
an understandable thing to do. But it counts
outcome-related argument about the pre
legislation.'00 Distracted by these issues of
other courts have done, or what the languag
legislators-for all their vices -tend at least t
matter.101
In this regard, it is striking how rich the
on important issues of rights in countries w
read through the House of Commons deba
Pregnancy Bill from 1966.103 This was a b
law. The second reading debate on that bill i
institution grappling with moral issues a
sustained debate - about one hundred pag
pro-life Labour people and pro-choice Lab
and pro-choice Conservatives, talking th
questions that need to be addressed when
debated the questions passionately, but als
attention to the rights, principles, and prag
debate that in the end the supporters of t
prevailed.'05 One remarkable thing was that
debate, even the pro-life MPs (when they sa
go), paid tribute to the respectfulness wit
100. Eisgruber seems to concede this, acknowledging
controversial rulings by citing ambiguous preceden
unilluminating formulae and quotations borrowed
note 13, at 70; see also id. at 135 ("[JJudges . . . oft
political judgments themselves, and that their deci
details or historical facts.").
101. There is an important point here that Mark T
criticizing legislators for failing to reason as judge
address the issues at stake. Tushnet, supra note 11,
102. This is adapted from Waldron, supra note 46.
103. In the British legislature, the second reading deb
main principles of the bill.
104. 732 Parl. Deb., H.C. (5th ser.) (1966) 1067,1067-
105. The second reading debate was not the end, of
and then a third reading debate, and then simil
eventually the liberalizing legislation was enacted.
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
listened to and heard in that discussion. i6 Think about that: How many times
have we ever heard anybody on the pro-life side pay tribute to the attention
and respectfulness with which her position was discussed, say, by the Supreme
Court in Roe v. Wade?l07
In the United States, we congratulate ourselves on consigning issues of
individual rights such as abortion rights to the courts for constitutional
adjudication on the ground that courts may be regarded as forums of principle,
to use Ronald Dworkin's famous phrase.1o8 Indeed we sometimes say the
British are backward for not doing things that way.'09 But the key difference
between the British legislative debate and the American judicial reasoning is
that the latter is mostly concerned with interpretation and doctrine, while in
the former decisionmakers are able to focus steadfastly on the issue of abortion
itself and what it entails - on the ethical status of the fetus, on the predicament
of pregnant women and the importance of their choices, their freedom, and
their privacy, on the moral conflicts and difficulties that all this involves, and
on the pragmatic issues about the role that law should play in regard to private
moral questions. Those are the issues that surely need to be debated when
society is deciding about abortion rights, and those are the issues that are given
most time in the legislative debates and least time in the judicial
deliberations.ll1
io6. See, e.g., 732 Parl. Deb., H.C. (5th ser.) (1966) 1152. Norman St. John-Stevas, a Catholic MP
who voted against the bill, nevertheless began his argument by noting, "[w]e all agree that
this has been a vitally important debate, conducted on a level which is worthy of the highest
traditions of the House." Id. He then moved on to congratulate the bill's sponsor "on the
manner in which he introduced the Bill, which he did with extraordinary moderation and
skill." Id.
107. When I mention this example, my American friends tell me that the British legislature is
organized to make forms of debate possible that are not possible in the United States. Well,
leaving aside the question of whether the United States should be regarded as a pathological
case, this is simply false. The debate I have just referred to worked because the House of
Commons suspended one of its distinguishing features?strong party discipline?for the
purpose of this issue of rights. MPs actually debated the matter much more in the style of
their American counterparts, not necessarily toeing a party line but stating their own
opinions clearly and forcefully.
108. Dworkin, supra note 3, at 33, 69-71.
109. See Editorial, Half-Measures on British Freedoms, N.Y. Times, Nov. 17, 1997, at A22
(criticizing the Human Rights Act for not moving the United Kingdom wholeheartedly to a
system of strong judicial review).
no. Elena Kagan and others have suggested to me that this critique of the way courts discuss
rights is predicated on an assumption that what we are aiming to protect are moral rights.
If, on the other hand, what we value is the protection of our legal constitutional rights, then
this mode of discussion is not as inappropriate as my critique suggests. I am not convinced.
What we aim to protect is rights, and the question is what mechanisms available in the
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
I am sure there is more to be said on the
certainly the case that just as courts address
distort what is really at stake, so too can leg
legislative majorities act out of panic, reckles
sectarian slogans in their pseudo-debates. T
in deliberation should be regarded as norm
way that the respective institutions-court
behave? Despite Dworkin's rhetoric about "fo
are expected to behave in the ways that I have
text, doctrine, and other legalisms. Our assum
two - is about institutions that behave in tha
(legalistic) standards. In the case of legislat
legislating is not part of the normal theory o
It is not what we should assume for the core
in a society most of whose members resp
countries - perhaps the United States
pathologies have developed. If that is so, then
non-core argument for judicial review to the
V. PROCESS-RELATED REASONS
Among the reasons we have for setting up decision-procedures one way or
another, some may have little to do with outcomes, either particular outcomes
or outcomes in general. They are concerned instead with voice or fairness or
other aspects of the process itself. As I said earlier, it is often assumed that
process-related arguments weigh unequivocally against judicial review. This is
not quite true. Some feeble process-related arguments have been concocted by
defenders of the practice, and I shall review those at the end of this Part. But it
is mostly true: The preponderance of the process-related reasons weigh in
favor of legislatures.
The question of the political legitimacy of decision-procedures in the face
of disagreement about outcomes may be posed as follows. (I am afraid this is
going to be quite abstract.)
modern state are best at protecting them and facilitating intelligent discussion about them. I
do not assume that the mode of discourse in a moral philosophy seminar is the appropriate
one. What I am suggesting here is that it is important, one way or another, to get at the real
issues of human interests and human liberties that are at stake in our disagreements. A
legalistic way of proceeding may or may not be the best way of doing that, but it would be
quite wrong to say that we ought to value the legalism as an end in itself.
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
We imagine a decision being made by a certain process and we imagine a
citizen Cn - who is to be bound or burdened by the decision - disagreeing with
the decision and asking why she should accept, comply, or put up with it.
Some of those who support the decision may try to persuade CQ that it is right
in its substance. But they may fail, not because of any obtuseness on her part,
but simply because CQ continues (not unreasonably) to hold a different view on
this vexed and serious matter. What then is to be said to Cn? A plausible
answer may be offered to her concerning the process by which the decision was
reached. Even though she disagrees with the outcome, she may be able to
accept that it was arrived at fairly. The theory of such a process-based response
is the theory of political legitimacy.
Political decision-procedures usually take the following form. Because there
is disagreement about a given decision, the decision is to be made by a
designated set of individuals {Cl, C2, . .. Cm} using some designated decision
procedure. The burden of legitimacy-theory is to explain why it is appropriate
for these individuals, and not some others, to be privileged to participate in the
decisionmaking. As CQ might put it, "Why them? Why not me?" The theory of
legitimacy will have to provide the basis of an answer to that question. Because
the problem is general- it is not just a matter of Ca's idiosyncratic perversity
it will have to give a similar answer to similar questions from CO and Cp and all
the other C's not included in the set of privileged decisionmakers. But even if
this answer is accepted, the struggle is not over. The theory of legitimacy also
has to provide an answer to an additional question that CQ may pose: "In the
decision-procedure that was used, why wasn't greater weight given to the
views of those decisionmakers who felt as I do about the matter?" There must
be a defense of the decision-procedure used by {Cl, C2, . . . Cm}, not just a
defense of its membership.
Let us now make this abstract algebra more concrete. Suppose a citizen
who disagrees with a legislative decision about rights poses the two questions I
have envisaged. She asks: (1) why should this bunch of roughly five hundred
men and women (the members of the legislature) be privileged to decide a
question of rights affecting me and a quarter billion others?; and (2) even if I
accept the privileging of this five hundred, why wasn't greater weight given to
the views of those legislators who agreed with me?
In democracies, legislatures are set up in ways that provide reasonably
convincing answers to these two questions. The answer to the first question is
provided by the theory of fair elections to the legislature, elections in which
people like CQ were treated equally along with all their fellow citizens in
determining who should be privileged to be among the small number
participating in decisions of this kind. The answer to the second question is
given by the well-known fairness arguments underlying the principle of
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
majority decision (MD). It is not m
fairness/equality defense of the majoritythan
any other rule, MD is neutral as betw
participants equally, and gives each exp
possible compatible with giving equal
disagree about the desired outcome, whe
up-front one way or another, and when ea
moral claim to be treated as an equal in
like it - is the principle to use.112
But what if someone responds as follows
like CQ have a right to be treated as equ
matter that affects them all. But why do t
legislature have a right to be treated as eq
their use of MD?
The answer refers to the continuity as b
second questions in the case of legislatures
MD to choose representatives and we use
among representatives. The theory is that
approximation of the use of MD as a decisi
a whole (and so a reasonable approximat
underlying MD to the citizenry as a whole
In general, then, what we are saying t
not the only one who makes this challenge
As a matter of fact, millions of individual
by conceding her point and giving her a s
give her as much of a say as we can, thoug
that we are trying to respond fairly to the
lines to take into account the voice of e
in. For the theorem (in social choice theory) that
fairness, equality, and rationality, see Amar
Welfare 71-74 (1970); and Kenneth O. May, A Set
Conditions for Simple Majority Decision, 20 Econ
discussions in Charles R. Beitz, Political Equa
Democracy and Its Critics 139-41 (1989).
i?. Ronald Dworkin has convinced me, in conversat
to use in regard to first-order issues of justice. I
somebody had to go overboard, it would not be
should be. MD is an appropriate principle, howe
someone in the life-boat proposes that we shoul
that the oldest person should be required to leav
for choosing among these rules.
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
person the greatest say possible compatible with an equal say for each of the
others. That is our principle. And we believe that our complicated electoral and
representative arrangements roughly satisfy that demand for political
equality- that is, equal voice and equal decisional authority.
Of course, in the real world, the realization of political equality through
elections, representation, and legislative process is imperfect. Electoral systems
are often flawed (e.g., by unsatisfactory arrangements for drawing district
boundaries or a lack of proportionality between districts) and so are legislative
procedures (e.g., by a system of seniority that compromises fairness in the
legislature). All this can be acknowledged. But remember our first assumption:
a set of legislative institutions-including a system of elections to the
legislature and a system of decisionmaking within it-that are in reasonably
good shape so far as these democratic values of equality and fairness are
concerned. We are assuming also that the legislators and their constituents
keep this system under review for its conformity to these principles. For
example, in many democracies there are debates about rival systems of
proportional representation, districting, and legislative procedure. Cn may
complain that these systems are not perfect and that they have not been
reformed to the extent that they ought to have been. But a good theory of
legitimacy (for real-world polities) will have a certain looseness to
accommodate inevitable defects. It will talk about reasonable fairness, not
perfect fairness. No doubt some electoral and legislative systems fail even these
generous criteria. But our core case is not supposed to address situations in
which the legislative and electoral systems are pathologically or incorrigibly
dysfunctional.
Let's return to our core case and to the confrontation we are imagining
with our recalcitrant citizen C,. That something along the lines described above
can be said in response to QC's complaint about the decision of a reasonably
well-organized legislature is important for legitimacy, but it is not conclusive.
For C, may envisage a different procedure that is even more legitimate than the
legislative procedure is. Legitimacy is partly comparative."3 Because different
institutions and processes might yield different results, defending the
legitimacy of a given institution or process involves showing that it was or
would be fairer than some other institution or process that was available and
might have reached the contrary decision."14
So now we imagine -or, in a system like the United States, we observe decisions
being made not by a legislature but by a court (let's make it the U.S.
113. See Waldron, supra note 47.
114. See Michelman, supra note 76, at 57-59.
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
Supreme Court) on a vexed issue of rights on which th
a citizen - again we'll call her Cn - who disagrees with
the court's decisions complains about it. She asks: (
men and women determine the matter?; and (2) eve
they make their decision using the procedure tha
procedure that gives more weight to Justices with a vie
These are much tougher questions for the Court to
for legislators to answer. We have it on good autho
these are often voiced noisily outside the Court an
sometimes distressed by them. Some of them, however
(It is time to roll your eyes now and pay no attent
because I am going to quote Justice Antonin Scalia and
In truth, I am as distressed as the Court is . .
pressure" directed to the Court: the marches, the m
at inducing us to change our opinions. How upset
of our citizens (good people, not lawless ones,
abortion issue, and on various sides of other issues
Justices should properly take into account their vie
engaged not in ascertaining an objective law bu
kind of social consensus. The Court would profit, I
attention to thefact of this distressing phenomenon
the cause of it. That cause permeates today's op
constitutional adjudication that relies not upon
practice to determine the law, but upon what th
judgment," which turns out to be nothing but ph
and moral intuition.115
Justice Scalia continued:
What makes all this relevant to the bothersome appl
pressure" against the Court are the twin facts that
love democracy and the American people are not foo
Court thought (and the people thought) that we
essentially lawyers' work up here - reading text
society's traditional understanding of that text- the
left us alone. Texts and traditions are facts to study
demonstrate about. But if in reality our process
adjudication consists primarily of making value ju
115. Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833,
dissenting) (citation omitted).
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
free and intelligent people's attitude towards us can be expected to be
(ought to be) quite different. The people know that their value
judgments are quite as good as those taught in any law school- maybe
better. If, indeed, the "liberties" protected by the Constitution are, as
the Court says, undefined and unbounded, then the people should
demonstrate, to protest that we do not implement their values instead
of ours."16
So, as Scalia says, the legitimacy questions are front-and-center, and the
defenders of judicial review have to figure out a response.
First, why should these Justices and these Justices alone decide the matter?
One answer might be that the Justices have been appointed and approved by
decisionmakers and decisionmaking bodies (the President and the Senate) who
have certain elective credentials. The President is elected and people often
know what sort of persons he is likely to appoint to the Supreme Court, and
the U.S. Senators who have to approve the appointments are elected also, and
their views on this sort of thing may be known as well. True, the Justices are
not regularly held accountable in the way legislators are, but, as we have
already remarked, we are not looking for perfection.
So, the defender of judicial review is not altogether tongue-tied in response
to our citizen's challenge; there is something to say. Nevertheless, if legitimacy
is a comparative matter, then it is a staggeringly inadequate response. The
system of legislative elections is not perfect either, but it is evidently superior as
a matter of democracy and democratic values to the indirect and limited basis
of democratic legitimacy for the judiciary. Legislators are regularly accountable
to their constituents and they behave as though their electoral credentials were
important in relation to the overall ethos of their participation in political
decisionmaking. None of this is true of Justices.
Second, even if we concede that vexed issues of rights should be decided by
these nine men and women, why should they be decided by simple majority
voting among the Justices? Here, the situation gets worse for defenders of
judicial review. I have always been intrigued by the fact that courts make their
decisions by voting, applying the MD principle to their meager numbers. I
know they produce reasons and everything we discussed above. But in the end
it comes down to head-counting: five votes defeat four in the U.S. Supreme
Court, irrespective of the arguments that the Justices have concocted. If MD is
challenged in this context, can we respond to it in roughly the same way that
we imagined a response on behalf of legislatures? Actually, no, we cannot. MD
ii6. Id. at ?ooo-oi.
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
is appropriate for persons who have a moral
as equals in some decision-process. But I ca
claim in the case of Supreme Court Justices.
Their claim to participate is functional, not a
I am handicapped here by the more or le
attention to the use of MD in courts.117 Scho
empirical experience of voting and voting
suggested novel ways of combining judge
involved in each case, rather than on the over
of any elementary defense of judicial majo
and-equality defense is unavailable. I suspec
were to be defended, it would be defended ei
decision with no further theoretical ram
Condorcet's jury theorem (majority vot
arithmetically enhances the competence o
competence of its members) .21 If it is the lat
of the outcome-related case for judicial comp
have to compete with a similar case that c
voting bodies in legislatures.'22 However t
117. I try to say a litde about it in Waldron, Deliberation
at 215-24.
118. See, e.g., Lewis A. Kornhauser & Lawrence G. Sager, The One and the Many: Adjudication in
Coll?gial Courts, 81 Cal. L. Rev. 1 (1993); Lewis A. Kornhauser & Lawrence G. Sager,
Unpacking the Court, 96 Yale LJ. 82 (1986); David Post & Steven C. Salop, Rowing Against
the Tidewater: A Theory of Voting by Multijudge Panels, 80 Geo. L.J. 743 (1992).
119. One reason for this is that defenders of judicial review prefer not to talk about the use of
simple majority voting among the Justices on issues of rights. They want to be able to
condemn majority voting on rights as a characteristic of legislatures. If pressed, they will
acknowledge that, of course, judges decide issues by, say, 5-4 or 6-3 majorities on the
Supreme Court. But I have never, ever heard a defender of judicial review introduce this into
discussion himself or herself, let alone undertake to explain why it is a good idea.
120. See Hannah Arendt, On Revolution 163 (photo, reprint 1982) (1963) (stating that "the
principle of majority is inherent in the very process of decision-making" and is "likely to be
adopted almost automatically in all types of deliberative councils and assemblies").
121. Marquis de Condorcet, Essay on the Application of Mathematics to the Theory of Decision
Making (1785), reprinted in Condorcet: Selected Writings 33 (Keith Michael Baker ed. &
trans., 1976).
122. The Condorcet theorem holds that the larger the voting group, the greater the enhancement
of group competence above average individual voter competence by majority voting. Of
course, the result presupposes that average individual competence is higher than fifty
percent. For a discussion of Condorcet's doubts about the application of this last condition,
see Jeremy Waldron, Democratic Theory and the Public Interest: Condorcet and Rousseau
Revisited, 83 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 1317,1322 (1989).
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
point is this: There is no additional fairness argument for the use of MD by
courts, as there is for its use by legislatures.
These last points should remind us that the responses we have been
imagining to QC's challenge to legislative and judicial procedures do not stand
alone. We may also make an outcome-related case to respond to her challenge.
But I think I have been able to show in this Part, and the previous Part, that the
outcome-related case is inconclusive (or it argues in favor of legislatures) while
the process-related case is almost wholly on the legislative side. Remember too
what we said at the end of Part III. The reasons on both sides have to do with
rights. If one institution or the other was clearly superior at determining what
rights people really have, then that would weigh very heavily indeed in favor of
that institution. But that is not the case. On the process side, institutions giving
final authority on these matters to judges fail to offer any sort of adequate
response to the fairness-complaint of the ordinary citizen based on the
principle - not just the value - of political equality. That failure might be
tolerable if there were a convincing outcome-based case for judicial
decisionmaking. Defenders of judicial review pretend that there is. But as we
saw above, it is just unsupported assertion.
Perhaps aware of all this, defenders of judicial review have tried a number
of last-ditch attempts to reconcile their favored institution to democratic
values. I will consider these briefly, because there is not much to them.
First, defenders of judicial review claim that judges do not make their own
decisions about rights; they simply enforce decisions of the people that are
embodied in a Bill of Rights, which itself has democratic credentials, either as
legislation or as part of a constitution. This claim does not undermine the core
case against judicial review. We are assuming that the Bill of Rights does not
settle the disagreements that exist in the society about individual and minority
rights. It bears on them but it does not settle them. At most, the abstract terms
of the Bill of Rights are popularly selected sites for disputes about these issues.
The question we have been considering is who is to settle the issues that are
fought out on those sites.
Second, and in much the same spirit, defenders of judicial review claim that
judges are simply enforcing the society's own precommitment to rights. The
society has bound itself to the mast on certain principles of right, and, like
Ulysses' shipmates, the judges are just making sure the ropes remain tied. This
common analogy has been thoroughly discredited in the literature.'23 Briefly,
123. See Jon Elster, Ulysses Unbound 88-96 (2000) (casting doubt on some arguments made
in Jon Elster, Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality 93
(1984)) ; see also Waldron, supra note 14, at 255-81.
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
the response is that the society has not comm
of what a given right entails, so when citizens
why giving judges the power to decide shou
precommitment. If someone insists neverth
itself to a particular view about the right in q
among themselves, somehow ascertain th
alternative understanding of the right is in pla
precommitment should hold. The Ulysse
precommitment guards against various aberrat
changes of mind in relation to genuine disag
outcome would be. `4
Third, defenders of judicial review claim tha
judicial decision about rights, they can campai
explicitly override it. Their failure to do th
endorsement. This argument is flawed because
that judicial decisionmaking establishes.
characteristically involves a supermajority; or
style statute, it will have credentials in the pol
and increase the burden associated with t
disgruntled citizen CQ asks why the deck shoul
answer we can give her refers back to judic
been found wanting.
Fourth, defenders of judicial review insist
credentials: They are nominated and confirm
kind of judicial nominations that a candidat
make nowadays plays an important role
campaign."25 This is true; but (as I have
comparative, and these credentials are not
democratic credentials of elected legislators.
accept judges because of their democratic c
affirmative case that is made in favor of j
valuable form of political decisionmaking.
Fifth and finally, defenders of judicial review
justified as an additional mode of access for
124. See Waldron, supra note 14, at 266-70.
125. Eisgruber, supra note 13, at 4 ("Though the justice
are nevertheless selected through a process that is bo
are chosen by elected officials: they are nominated b
Senate. . . . The justices have ... a democratic pedigr
their political views and their political connections as m
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
system. Sometimes citizens access the system as voters, sometimes as lobbyists,
sometimes as litigants. They say we should evaluate the legitimacy of the whole
package of various modes of citizen access, not just the democratic credentials
of this particular component. The point is a fair one, as far as it goes. But
embedding judicial review in a wider array of modes of citizen participation
does not alter the fact that this is a mode of citizen involvement that is
undisciplined by the principles of political equality usually thought crucial to
democracy. People tend to look to judicial review when they want greater
weight for their opinions than electoral politics would give them. Maybe this
mode of access can be made to seem respectable when other channels of
political change are blocked.l26 We will discuss this in Part VII. But the
attitudes toward one's fellow citizens that judicial review conveys are not
respectable in the core case we are considering, in which the legislature and the
elective arrangements are in reasonably good shape so far as democratic values
are concerned.
VI. THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY
I want to give defenders of judicial review- for the core case - one last bite
at the apple. The concern most commonly expressed about the work of a
democratic legislature is that, because they are organized on a majoritarian
basis, legislative procedures may give expression to the "tyranny of the
majority." So widespread is this fear, so familiar an element is it in our political
culture, so easily does the phrase "tyranny of the majority" roll off our
tongues,127 that the need for judicially patrolled constraints on legislative
decisions has become more or less axiomatic. What other security do minorities
have against the tyranny of the majority?
I believe that this common argument is seriously confused. Let us grant, for
now, that tyranny is what happens to someone when their rights are denied.
The first thing to acknowledge is that, according to this definition, tyranny is
almost always going to be at stake in any disagreement about rights. In any
disagreement about rights, the side in favor of the more expansive
understanding of a given right (or the side that claims to recognize a right that
126. See John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust : A Theory of Judicial Review (1980).
127. Mill's one criticism of Tocqueville's Democracy in America was that the likely political effect
of his popularizing the phrase, "the tyranny of the majority," would be to give conservative
forces additional rhetoric with which to oppose progressive legislation. See John Stuart
Mill, M. de Tocqueville on Democracy in America, Edinburgh Rev., Oct. 1840, reprinted in 2
Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical 1, 79-81
(photo, reprint 1973) (1859).
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
the other denies) will think that the oppo
tyrannical. For example, the peyote smokers
sacraments to generally applicable narcotics
campaign finance laws will think those laws
question whether they are right. Some of t
doubt correct. But they do not become correct
Indeed, in some cases, there will be allegatio
rights issue. Defenders of abortion rights thi
tyrannical to women; but the pro-life people
tyrannical to another class of persons (fetuse
Some think that affirmative action is tyran
implement affirmative action programs is tyr
Let us grant what we acknowledged in
Wollheim's paradox. Democratic institutions
incorrect decisions about rights. This m
tyrannically. But the same is true of an
sometimes act tyrannically as well."28 Tyrann
is more or less inevitable. It is just a matter of
to be, which was the subject of our discussion
Is the tyranny of a political decision agg
imposed by a majority? I leave aside the ped
reach its decision by majority voting. Is tyra
majority of elected representatives, each s
constituents) a particularly egregious form
could be. Either we say that tyranny is tyrann
whom) the tyrannical decision is made, or
the majoritarian aspect actually mitigates the
there was at least one non-tyrannical thing a
in a way that tyrannically excluded certain pe
That may seem a little flip, so let m
provocatively. The most commonly express
legislative authority is that minorities or ind
relation to the majority. They may be oppres
their rights denied and violated compared t
interests unduly subordinated to those of
128. I am not referring to their sins of omission (failin
rights abuses). For examples of these, see supra note 8
commission: Sometimes the power of judicial rev
prevent legislatures from according people (what are
some examples, see supra note 4 and accompanying te
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
example, harmed or neglected in a way that justice condemns). In describing
these forms of tyranny, oppression, or injustice, we use the terms "majority"
and "minority." But in this particular context they are not necessarily terms
related to political decision-processes. Let me explain.
Injustice is what happens when the rights or interests of the minority are
wrongly subordinated to those of the majority. Now, we have conceded that
this may happen as a result of majoritarian political decisionmaking. When it
does, however, we need to distinguish at least in the first instance between the
"decisional" majority and minority and what I shall call the "topical" majority
and minority"9 -i.e., the majority and minority groups whose rights are at
stake in the decision. In some cases the membership of the decisional majority
may be the same as the membership of the topical majority and the
membership of the decisional minority- those who voted against the
injustice- may be the same as the membership of the topical minority. This is
often true in the case of racial injustice for example: White legislators
(decisional majority) vote for white privilege (topical majority); black
legislators lose out in the struggle for equal rights for blacks. These are the
cases, I submit, that we should be particularly concerned about under the
heading of "the tyranny of the majority."
With this distinction in mind, let us return to cases of rights-disagreement.
Suppose that there is disagreement in a society about what the rights of a
topical minority are. Assuming this disagreement has to be settled, the society
will have to deliberate about it and apply its decision-procedures to the issue.
Suppose the society uses MD to settle this matter, I take part in this
decisionmaking, using my vote, and the side that I vote for loses. I am
therefore a member of the decisional minority on this issue. But so far it has
not been shown that anything tyrannical has happened to me. To show that we
would have to show two additional things: (1) that the decision really was
wrong and tyrannical in its implications for the rights of those affected; and (2)
that I was a member of the topical minority whose rights were adversely
affected by this wrong decision.
129- I use "topical" because their rights and interests are the topic of the decision. The term
"topical minority" is a loose one, and there is always likely to be dispute about whom it
comprises (and the same is true of "topical majority"). But the looseness is not a problem.
Even loosely defined, the distinction between topical and decisional minorities enables us to
see that not everyone who votes for the losing side in an issue about rights should be
regarded as a member of the group whose rights have been adversely affected by the
decision. See Waldron, supra note 14, at 13-14; Waldron, Precommitment and Disagreement,
supra note 19; Waldron, Rights and Majorities, supra note 19, at 64-66.
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
The point to remember here is that nothing
merely by virtue of the fact that my opinion is no
of which I am a member. Provided that the opinion
interests properly into account along with every
opinion did not prevail is not itself a threat to my
to my well-being. None of this changes necessarily
topical minority whose rights are at issue. Peo
topical minorities -do not necessarily have the r
They may be wrong about the rights they have;
Responsible talk about "tyranny of the majority" w
in mind.
To sum up, tyranny of the majority is possible. But the term should not be
used simply to mark the speaker's disagreement with the outcome of a majority
decision. The most fruitful way of characterizing tyranny of the majority is to
say that it happens when topical minorities are aligned with decisional
minorities. In Part VII, I shall consider the application of this to what are called
"discrete and insular minorities."'30 For now, though, we may note that this
sort of alignment is exactly what we should not expect under the core
assumptions we are considering. Assumption three was that most people, and
therefore most members of any given decisional majority, care about rights just
as much as the members of a given decisional minority. And our fourth
assumption about disagreement was that disagreement is not usually driven by
selfish interests. Disagreement is sufficiently explained by the complexity and
difficulty of the issues themselves. What Rawls called "the burdens of
judgment"'31 argue precisely against the sort of alignment between opinion and
interests that, we have just seen, responsible talk of the tyranny of the majority
ought to presuppose.
The conclusion is not, however, that tyranny of the majority is something
we need not worry about. Rather, the conclusion is that tyranny of the
majority- if that term is being used responsibly- is a characteristic of non-core
cases, in which people care little for minority or individual rights other than
their own. I do not want to deny that this happens. But I think it is important
to emphasize its incompatibility with my third assumption and not to try to
talk simultaneously about a society committed to rights in which tyranny of the
majority is nevertheless an endemic possibility.
The distinctions made in this Part can help us deal with two other
arguments about judicial review. First, Ronald Dworkin argues in Freedom's
130. See infra text accompanying notes 137-141.
131. Rawls, Political Liberalism, supra note 53, at 54-58.
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
Law that democratic decisionmaking is inherently tyrannical if people's rights
are not respected. This is not just because it may generate tyrannical outcomes,
he argues, but because respect for rights is a background condition for the
legitimacy of any system of political decisionmaking. Dworkin is not just
making the familiar point that democracy depends (constitutively) on certain
rights, like the right to vote or, indirectly, the right to free speech or freedom of
association. His point is more sophisticated than that. He maintains that
processes like MD have no legitimacy at all in a democratic context (or any
other context) unless each voter is assured that the others already regard him
with equal concern and respect. A bunch of terrorists deciding my fate by
majority decision (even an MD process in which I am given a vote) has no
legitimacy at all, because this background condition is not met. In general,
Dworkin argues, a person can hardly be expected to accept majority decisions
as legitimate if she knows that other members of the community do not take
her interests seriously or if the established institutions of the community evince
contempt or indifference toward her or her kind.'32
Dworkin thinks this refutes the democratic objection to judicial review.'33
Suppose a piece of legislation is enacted by an elected assembly and then
challenged by a citizen on the ground that it undermines right R, a right that is
a condition of democratic legitimacy. We imagine that others will disagree,
some because they think R is not a condition of democracy, others because they
understand R in a quite different way. And suppose the issue is assigned to a
court for final decision, and the court strikes down the statute, accepting the
citizen's challenge. Is there a loss to democracy? The answer, Dworkin says,
depends entirely on whether the court makes the right decision. If it does - that
is, if the statute really was incompatible with the rights required as conditions
for legitimate application of MD - then democracy is surely improved by what
the court has done, because the community is now more democratically
legitimate than it would have been if the statute had been allowed to stand.134
132. DwoRKiN, supra note 10, at 25.
133. Dworkin is careful to say that it is not an argument for judicial review. Id. at 7 ("Democracy
does not insist on judges having the last word, but it does not insist that they must not have
it.-).
134. Id. at 32-33 ("[I]f we assume that the court's decision was wrong, then none of this is true.
Certainly it impairs democracy when an authoritative court makes the wrong decision about
what the democratic conditions require?but no more than it does when a majoritarian
legislature makes a wrong constitutional decision that is allowed to stand. The possibility of
error is symmetrical.").
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
There are many things wrong with this a
pointed out elsewhere."35 For one thing, Dwor
a political decision is about democracy, then t
be raised about the institutional process by
seems wrong to me. If a decision about the m
conditions of its legitimacy) were made us
example, precluded the participation of wo
that procedure would not be disqualified simp
majoritarian process was actually the matte
values even when process is what is at stake in
But the most telling objection is this. Let us
democratic procedures are legitimate only
another's rights. That may be read in two way
legitimate only among people who hold and
another's rights; or (2) democratic procedu
people who take one another's rights seriou
hard as they can to figure what these right
strong; no imaginable political system sa
objection to the second reading of Dworkin
way, then Dworkin's premise is satisfied
considering in this Essay. Even if people disag
one another's rights seriously. Decisional m
they will be right about rights and sometime
something they have in common with all syst
alone cannot undermine their legitimacy, so l
assurance that most of their fellow citizen
seriously.
Second, we can also use the distinctions developed in this Part to help deal
with the allegation that unreviewable legislative decisionmaking about rights
involves the majority being the judge in its own case. Those who invoke the
maxim nemo iudex in sua causa in this context say that it requires that a final
decision about rights should not be left in the hands of the people. Rather, it
should be passed on to an independent and impartial institution such as a
court.
It is hard to see the force of this argument. Almost any conceivable
decision-rule will eventually involve someone deciding in his own case. Unless
we envisage a literally endless chain of appeals, there will always be some
person or institution whose decision is final. And of that person or institution,
135- For a full response, see Waldron, supra note 14, at 282-312.
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
we can always say that because it has the last word, its members are ipso facto
ruling on the acceptability of their own view. Facile invocations of nemo iudex
in sua causa are no excuse for forgetting the elementary logic of legitimacy:
People disagree, and there is need for a final decision and a final decision
procedure.
What this second argument for the necessity of judicial review might mean
is that the members of the topical majority- i.e., the majority whose rights and
interests is at stake - should not be the ones whose votes are decisive in
determining whether those rights and interests are to remain ascendant. And
there are legitimate grounds for concern when topical majorities align with
decisional majorities. (If this alignment is endemic, then I think we are dealing
with a non-core case, for reasons I will explain in Part VII.) But it is striking
how rarely this happens, including how rarely it happens in the kinds of cases
that are normally dealt with by judicial review in the United States. Think of
the two examples I mentioned earlier: abortion and affirmative action. In
neither case is there the sort of alignment that might be worrying. Many
women support abortion rights, but so do many men; and many women
oppose them. Many African-Americans support affirmative action, but so do
many members of the white majority; and many African-Americans oppose
affirmative action. This is what we should expect in a society in which our
third and fourth assumptions, set out in Part II, are satisfied. People who take
rights seriously must be expected to disagree about them; but it is a sign of
their taking rights seriously that these disagreements will be relatively
independent of the personal stakes that individuals have in the matter.
VIl.NON-CORE CASES
The arguments I have made so far are based on four quite demanding
assumptions. What becomes of these arguments when the assumptions fail, or
for societies in which the assumptions do not hold? I have in mind particularly
my first assumption that a society has democratic and legislative institutions in
good shape so far as political equality is concerned, and my third assumption
that the members of the society we are considering are by and large committed
to the idea of individual and minority rights. For many people, I think the case
for judicial review rests on the refusal to accept these assumptions. Judicial
review is in part a response to perceived failures of democratic institutions, or it
is in part a response to the fact that many people do not take rights sufficiently
seriously (so they need a court to do it for them). In sum, supporters of the
practice will say we need judicial review of legislation in the real world, not the
ideal world defined by my assumptions.
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
A number of things need to be said in re
couple of specific issues about non-core ca
I have been proceeding are not unrealist
general commitment to rights in the societ
the case for judicial review almost always a
which judicial review is envisaged has a Bil
relation to the views of citizens. The first
legislative arrangements being in reasonab
even in the name of political equality we a
Also, in Part V, when I talked about the le
again stressed that my argument did not t
to individual citizens' demand for voice
legitimacy of legislative decisionmaking d
the utopian perfection of legislative in
embodying the principle of political equ
aspects. It turns on these institutions being
organized in a way that is designed to
reasonable effort to do so. Finally, I took
an actual legislature -the House of Comm
Pregnancy Bill 1966 - as an example of how
concoction of the philosophical a priori.
Having said all that, we still must ask
against judicial review if the assumptions
In cases in which the assumptions fail, t
presented in this Essay does not go thr
argument is a conditional one.136 Howe
review of legislation is defensible whenev
other good arguments against judicial r
assumptions like mine. Or it may be the c
of ameliorating a particular situation.
judicial review of legislation if judicial d
corrupt or no less prejudiced than it
arguments we entertained for the core ca
this logic applies to non-core cases as well
Suppose we are dealing with a case that i
of my first assumption: In this case, legis
or deliberative, the system of elections
136. See supra text accompanying note 43. For an
Waldron, supra note 47.
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
used in the legislature no longer bear any credible relation to political
legitimacy. Two questions then arise: (1) Is it possible to improve the situation,
so far as the legislature is concerned? (2) Should a final power of decision for
important issues of rights be vested in the courts, assuming that the courts
would handle those issues better? The questions are independent, for we may
reasonably think that some issues of rights are too urgent to await the
emergence of a more responsible and representative legislature. But they are
not utterly independent. Vesting the final power of decision in courts may well
make it more difficult to reform the legislature or more difficult to develop the
legislative ethos that the first assumption, and perhaps also the third
assumption, presuppose. I have heard speculation to this effect about the
United States: The idea is that U.S. legislatures, particularly state legislatures,
operate irresponsibly and in a way that fails to take rights seriously because the
knowledge that the courts are there as backup makes it harder to develop a
responsible culture among legislators. How far this is true, I don't know. It is
certainly worth considering.
I want to end by discussing one well-known way in which my first
assumption might be thought to fail. I have in mind Justice Stone's suggestion
in the famous Carolene Products footnote four: "[P]rejudice against discrete and
insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail
the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect
minorities ...."137 This it seems to me is an excellent way of characterizing the
sort of non-core case in which the argument for judicial review of legislative
decisions has some plausibility. Minorities in this situation may need special
care that only non-elective institutions can provide - special care to protect
their rights and special care (as John Hart Ely points out) to repair the political
system and facilitate their representation.138
We have to be cautious about this argument, however. It follows from
what I said in Part VI that not every minority deserves this special treatment:
certainly not every decisional minority, and not even every topical minority.139
There is no reason to suppose even that every chronic minority deserves this
137- United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144, 153 n.4 (1938); see also Keith E.
Whittington, An "Indispensable Feature"? Constitutionalism and Judicial Review, 6 N.Y.U. J.
Legis. & Pub. Pol'y 21, 31 (2002) (stating that my neglect of this idea in Law and
Disagreement is "striking from the perspective of American constitutional theory").
138. Ely, supra note 126, at 135-79.
139. Tushnet, supra note 11, at 159 ("Every law overrides the views of the minority that loses_
We have to distinguish between mere losers and minorities that lose because they cannot
protect themselves in politics.").
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 20o6
special treatment, certainly not chronic de
the United States, for example.
Too often the phrase "discrete and insular"
distinct and identifiable minority is discre
magical about Justice Stone's language. But
"insular" are useful adjectives, for they conve
that exists apart from political decisionm
minority-but also a minority whose members
community in the sense that they do not
members that would enable them to build
their interests. The alignment of decisiona
warned against in Part VI is a good example of
is a cause for concern.
What about the other criterion that Jus
minority is the victim of prejudice? Pe
incompatible with my third and fourth assum
or hostility to the rights of the group's mem
the majority to differ unreasonably from th
their own rights. But the term "prejudi
connotations may fail to capture the depth
antipathy between one group and another.'40
particular mode of antipathy, but to distingu
the phenomenon of reasonable disagreement a
In such cases, the core argument against jud
cannot be sustained. But, again, this is not
been made in favor of judicial review. Everyt
majorities are infected with the same prejudic
are, then the case may be not only non-core
review cannot do anything for the rights of t
at all in the society for minority rights. The a
for judicial review in these circumstances assu
the relevant minority's rights outside the min
ho. See Charles R. Lawrence III, The Id, the Ego, and Equa
Racism, 39 Stan. L. Rev. 317 (1987). I am grateful to
point.
141. It is important also to distinguish between prejudices and views held strongly on religious
or ethical grounds. We should not regard the views of pro-life advocates as prejudices
simply because we do not share the religious convictions that support them. Almost all
views about rights ? including pro-choice views ? are deeply felt and rest in the final analysis
on firm and deep-seated convictions of value.
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THE CORE OF THE CASE AGAINST JUDICIAL REVIEW
it is largely confined to political elites. The idea is that most ordinary members
of the majority do not share this sympathy. Now the elite members who do
share it-I shall call them elite sympathizers - may be in the legislature or they
may be in the judiciary. The argument for giving final authority to judges is
that elite sympathizers in the judiciary are better able than elite sympathizers in
an elected legislature to protect themselves when they accord rights to the
members of an unpopular minority. They are less vulnerable to public anger
and they need not worry about retaliation. They are therefore more likely to
protect the minority.
Notice how this argument for judicial review depends on a particular
assumption about the distribution of support for the minority's rights. The
sympathy is assumed to be strongest among political elites. If that is false -if
the sympathy is stronger among ordinary people -then there is no reason to
accept the argument of the previous paragraph. On the contrary, elective
institutions may be better at protecting minority rights because electoral
arrangements will provide a way of channeling popular support for minority
rights into the legislature, whereas there are no such channels into the
judiciary. No doubt, the distribution of support for minority rights varies from
case to case. But I find it interesting that most defenders of judicial review,
when they assume that there will be some support for minority rights in a
society, are convinced that in all cases it will be found among elites if it is found
anywhere. They will defend this as an empirical claim, but I must say it is
entirely consonant with ancient prejudices about democratic decisionmaking.
One other factor to take into account is whether an established practice of
judicial review will make it easier or harder in the long-term to remedy the
elective and legislative dysfunctions we are imagining here. In certain
circumstances, discrete and insular minorities may benefit from judicial
intervention to protect their rights. But institutionally, judicial solicitude may
make things worse, or at least fail to make them much better. As the United
States found in the 1950S and 1960s, for all the excitement of judicial attacks on
segregation in Brown and other cases, what was needed in the end was strong
legislative intervention (in the form of the Civil Rights Act), and it turned out
that the main difference was not courts versus legislatures per se, but federal
institutions versus state institutions, with the federal legislature finally playing
the decisive role.
Overall, we should not read the Carolene Products footnote or any similar
doctrine as a way of "leveraging" a more general practice of judicial review into
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL 115:1346 2006
existence.142 The problem of discrete and
a sort of Trojan Horse for judicial review
arguments against it. The aim of consi
judicial review; rather it is to do whate
minorities affected. We should aim directl
there is no convincing general argument f
be treated as a sort of ideological vanguard
CONCLUSION
I have not sought to show that the practice of judicial review of legislation
is inappropriate in all circumstances. Instead I have tried to show why rights
based judicial review is inappropriate for reasonably democratic societies whose
main problem is not that their legislative institutions are dysfunctional but that
their members disagree about rights.
Disagreement about rights is not unreasonable, and people can disagre
about rights while still taking rights seriously. In these circumstances, th
need to adopt procedures for resolving their disagreements that respect th
voices and opinions of the persons - in their millions - whose rights are at stake
in these disagreements and treat them as equals in the process. At the sam
time, they must ensure that these procedures address, in a responsible an
deliberative fashion, the tough and complex issues that rights-disagreemen
raise. Ordinary legislative procedures can do this, I have argued, and an
additional layer of final review by courts adds little to the process except
rather insulting form of disenfranchisement and a legalistic obfuscation of th
moral issues at stake in our disagreements about rights.
Maybe there are circumstances -peculiar pathologies, dysfunctiona
legislative institutions, corrupt political cultures, legacies of racism and other
forms of endemic prejudice - in which these costs of obfuscation an
disenfranchisement are worth bearing for the time being. But defenders o
judicial review ought to start making their claims for the practice frankly on
that basis - and make it with a degree of humility and shame in regard to the
circumstances that elicit it -rather than preaching it abroad as the epitome of
respect for rights and as a normal and normatively desirable element of modern
constitutional democracy.
142. See Tushnet, supra note 11, at 158-63, for a good general discussion of the limits on th
usefulness of this line of argument for supporting judicial review.
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