Abstract
For forty years, legal academics have been lost in a wilderness born of the counter-majoritarian difficulty. Despite a two-century pedigree, we are still arguing about the legitimacy of judicial review and asking whether it is a curse or a blessing. Many of our most prominent constitutional scholars are mired in attempts to constrain judicial review so as to reconcile it with their idealized vision of a constitutional regime grounded in pure majoritarianism. None has succeeded.
Herman O. Loewenstein Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University.
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Notes
Randy E. Barnett, An Originalism for Nonoriginalists, 45 Loy. L. Rev. 611, 617 (1999).
Anthony T. Kronman, Alexander Bickel’s Philosophy of Prudence, 94 Yale L. J. 1567, 1569 (1985).
Anthony Kronman, Practical Wisdom and Professional Character in Philosophy and Law, 203, 208 (Jules Coleman and Ellen Frankel Paul eds, 1987) (“Practical Wisdom”); see also Anthony T. Kronman, The Lost Lawyer: Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession (1993) (“Lost Lawyer”). Another nice description of character—and why it is important for judges—may be found in Mark Tushnet, Constitutional Interpretation, Character, and Experience, 72 B.U. L. Rev. 747, 762–763 (1993).
See, e.g. Daniel A. Farber, Reinventing Brandeis: Legal Pragmatism for the Twenty-First Century, U. Ill. L. Rev. 163 (1995).
I mean to distinguish this fear of error from a different type of fear that some have recently attributed to federal judges, especially Supreme Court Justices: fear of public opinion. Lawrence Solum calls this “civic cowardice.” See Lawrence B. Solum, Virtue Jurisprudence: A Virtue-Centred Theory of Judging, 34 Metaphilosophy 178, 183 (2003).
Stephen Breyer, Our Democratic Constitution, 77 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 245, 250 (2002).
Brett Scharffs, The Role of Humility in Exercising Practical Wisdom, 32 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 127, 157 (1998).
Malcolm M. Feeley and Samuel Krislov, Constitutional Law 34 (2nd edn. 1990); see also Alexander M. Bickel, The Supreme Court and the Idea of Progress 41 (1970) (a “ghastly error”);
Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law 28 (1990) (“the worst constitutional decision of the nineteenth century”);
David P. Currie, The Constitution in the Supreme Court: The First Hundred Years 1789–1888, at 264 (1985) (“bad policy,” “bad judicial politics,” and “bad law”);
Gary J. Jacob-sohn, The Supreme Court and the Decline of Constitutional Aspiration 44 (1986) (“the most odious action ever taken by a branch of the federal government”);
Robert G. McCloskey, The American Supreme Court 94 (1960) (“the most disastrous opinion the Supreme Court has ever issued”); Christopher L. Eisgruber, Dred Again: Originalism’s Forgotten Past, 10 Const. Comment. 37, 41 (1993) (“the worst atrocity in the Supreme Court’s history”).
Michael W. McConnell, Two-and-a-Half Cheers for Bush v. Gore, 68 U. Chi. L. Rev. 657 (2001).
Richard A. Epstein, “In such Manner as the Legislature Thereof May Direct”: The Outcome in Bush v. Gore Defended, 68 U. Chi. L. Rev. 613 (2001).
Richard A. Posner, Florida 2000: A Legal and Statistical Analysis of the Election Deadlock and Ensuing Litigation, Sup. Ct. Rev. 1, 60 (2000) (emphasis added).
Richard A. Posner, Breaking the Deadlock: The 2000 Election, the Constitution, and the Courts (2001); John C. Yoo, In Defense of the Court’s Legitimacy, 68 U. Chi. L. Rev. 775 (2001).
For a sampling of the voluminous criticism, see, e.g. Alan M. Dershowitz, Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 (2001);
Howard Gillman, The Votes That Counted: How the Court Decided the 2000 Presidential Election (2001);
Erwin Chemerinsky, Bush v. Gore Was not Justiciable, 76 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1093 (2001);
Elizabeth Garrett, Institutional Lessons from the 2000 Presidential Election, 29 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 975 (2001);
Stephen Holmes, Afterword: Can A Coin-Toss Election Trigger a Constitutional Earthquake? in The Unfinished Election of 2000, pp. 235–250 (Jack N. Rakove ed., 2001);
Samuel Issacharoff, Political Judgments, 68 U. Chi. L. Rev. 637 (2001);
Pamela S. Karlan, Equal Protection: Bush v. Gore and the Making of a Precedent in The Unfinished Election of 2000, supra, at 159;
Larry D. Kramer, The Supreme Court in Politics in The Unfinished Election of 2000, supra, at 105;
Frank I. Michelman, Suspicion, or the New Prince, 68 U. Chi. L. Rev. 679 (2001);
Peter M. Shane, Disappearing Democracy: How Bush v. Gore Undermined the Federal Right to Vote for Presidential Electors, 29 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 535 (2001);
David A. Strauss, Bush v. Gore: What Were They Thinking?, 68 U. Chi. L. Rev. 737 (2001); Sunstein, supra note 18;
Vikram Amar and Alan Brownstein, Bush v. Gore and Article II: Pressured Judgment Makes Dubious Law, 48 Fed. Law. 27 (March/April 2001).
Gerald Gunther was the first scholar—and perhaps the most sophisticated-but not the last, to criticize Bickel on these grounds. See Gerald Gunther, The Subtle Vices of the “Passive Virtues”—A Comment on Principle and Expediency in Judicial Review, 64 Colum. L. Rev. 1 (1964). For a more elaborate argument about Bickel’s lack of followers, see Kronman, supra note 4, at 1571–1573.
Richard A. Posner, The Jurisprudence of Skepticism, 86 Mich. L. Rev. 827, 854 (1988).
John T. Noonan, Jr., Education, Intelligence, and Character in Judges, 71 Minn. L. Rev. 1119, 1130–1321 (1987) (quoting Alpheus Thomas Mason, Brandeis: A Free Man’s Life 281 (1956)).
David Cole and William N. Eskridge, Jr., From Hand-Holding to Sodomy: First Amendment Protections of Homosexual (Expressive) Conduct, 29 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L.R. 319, 343 (1994).
Michael Klarman includes Griswold in his list of cases in which the Supreme Court’s decision reflected national majority views and suppressed “outlier state practices.” Michael J. Klarman, Rethinking the History of American Freedom, 42 Wm. Mary L. Rev. 265, 279 (2000).
Anthony Lewis, Abroad at Home; Question of Judgment, N.Y. Times, September 27, 1987, at D23.
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© 2008 Suzanna Sherry
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Sherry, S. (2008). Judges of Character. In: Farrelly, C., Solum, L.B. (eds) Virtue Jurisprudence. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-60073-1_4
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