The Judicial Review Process

To some people, it appears dichotomous that judges, who are not popularly elected, have such wide authority to strike down popular laws. This makes it appear that judges are not subject to any type of oversight by the people, which seems to go against the notion of a democracy. In many ways, the idea of judicial review and the court system does go against traditional democratic norms, because the popular will of the majority does not always prevail. However, this was not an unintentional arrangement. The Founding Fathers were very concerned about the idea of the tyranny of the majority; they were aware that without some system of control, the majority can and would strip minorities of their rights. Therefore, protecting judges from consequences of unpopular judgments was an intentional way of ensuring that judges could follow the dictates of the law and of the Constitution without fearing any political consequences. Of course, this means that judges who make bad decisions are also protected from political consequences, but that downside is a necessary consequence of a system that strives for an independent judiciary.

These source texts address the enduring issue concerning checks and balances by relating our undemocratic Supreme Court with democracy. These issues clearly reflect how prescient our founding fathers were in generating a set of founding principles enabling posterity to grapple with new and evolving situations that could not have been foreseen in the context of the times when our founding documents were written. Luckily, our system of checks and balances is closely aligned with democracy, and in most cases, provides useful direction in resolving the tension between the old and new issues. The argument that the Supreme Court is undemocratic is well supported because Supreme Court justices are appointed for life and because

Abstract: Throughout learning about politics in the United States, the judiciary sticks out as the branch that does not represent the American people. Supreme Court Justices are not elected into office and they also serve life terms. This paper will not argue that this should not be the case, but it will argue that this furthers the disconnect between politicians and the electorate. It will give a brief history of the Supreme Court and then argue that in recent years, especially since the establishment of the certiorari pool, that the Supreme Court has furthered disconnect. This paper will also discuss the different ways justices vote, big cases in history, and how much power a Supreme Court justice really has. It will look into how the ideology of the court changed over the past two hundred years and how it has led up to the current situation we are in today with the death of Antonin Scalia.

In transition, the Supreme Court of the United States has acquired a number of powers over the years. However, one power, in particular, is of great magnitude, judicial review. Judicial review is the judicial branch’s power to assess the legality of the actions of the legislative and executive branches of government, as well as the states.4 Accordingly, the federal judiciary determines the validity of such actions set by the Constitution of the United States. In brief, judicial review allows the court to determine whether or not legislation that is passed within government follows the guidelines of the United

The judicial branch is a mystery to most citizens. The other two branches of government – the executive and the legislative – rely on communication and interaction with their constituency through campaigning, commenting and pushing for their causes. In contrast, the judiciary is more cloistered and has traditionally held itself away from the people in order to be more neutral and independent of the other two branches of government. As such, the judicial

There is nothing controversial about saying, as Alexander Bickel did in The Least Dangerous Branch in 1962, “that judicial review is a counter-majoritarian force.” When one gives an unelected judiciary the power to declare null and void laws enacted by popularly elected representatives, there automatically exists the possibility that those jurists will rule counter to the wishes of a majority. To be sure, the existence of this judicial power creates fundamental problems in a constitutional democracy, and many forests have been felled in the scholarly quest to analyze those problems. As Bickel observed, the counter-majoritarian nature of judicial review is “the root difficulty” in the American judicial system. He also noted, however, that this force is an “ineluctable reality.” It is therefore misleading to argue that, “empirical studies of judicial review have consistently found that Bickel’s ‘difficulty’ does not actually exist.” The difficulty of which Bickel wrote did, and most definitely does continue to exist. Unpacking the socio-political factors that influence the way in which the “difficulty” manifests itself in judicial decision-making has prompted the aforementioned studies. However, those studies have never shown, because they never could show, that the “difficulty,” as Bickel defined it, “does not actually exist.”

Judicial Review is the power of the courts to review the acts of the other branches of government and states to declare whether or not their acts are unconstitutional. The roots of judicial review lie in the separation of powers principle which was institutionalized in the 17th century, however, it wasn’t until a century later that the concept of judicial review arose from it. Through his writing of the 78th Federalist Paper, Alexander Hamilton was the first individual to propose the idea that the Constitution should in fact be enforced amongst the legislatures. Unfortunately, the concept of judicial review was not written into the Constitution, despite the underlying support behind the concept Hamilton provided. Alternately, the paradigm

When it comes to legal disputes the courts are the final decider of what the constitution means. This authority known as judicial review gives the Supreme Court and other federal courts the authority to interpret the constitution. The structure of the Federal judicial system is divided into 3 different courts, and each court plays a pivotal role in the judicial review. Along with the Federal judicial system, there are other factors that affect the judicial review.

In this segment, we look at judicial review and the federal court system. Judicial Review, the power of the Judicial Branch of government to declare laws unconstitutional, is a fundamental property of the system of checks and balances implemented in the United States system of government. Established in 1803, in the court case of Marbury v. Madison by John Marshall, this principle is important to the current system of government and definitely belongs in our system of government.

Judicial review empowers the most powerful court in the United States the authority to hold the other government branches accountable to the words inscribed within the constitution. Our founding fathers made a decisive blunder when they constructed the Constitution. Consequently, they never stated whether the Judicial, Legislative, or Executive branch of government was the determinative entity in regards to constitutional issues. The Marbury v. Madison case helped find this error and establish key roles in the judicial review process (Cornell, n.d.).

The United States’ court system would not be able to function without the creation of judicial review. Since 1803, the practice of judicial review has formed and shaped both the political and social aspects of America by its ability to not only affect the way the Judicial branch functions, but also how how it affects the lives of American citizens both in America’s past and future. Although judicial review was created very early in the United States’ history, it has been able to influence countless amounts of court cases such as Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade. Additionally, both the First and the Fourteenth Amendments and their guarantees have been greatly affected by the creation of judicial review and have both

The U.S. is the only continent where it takes a lot of hard work and have dramatic conflicts to select and appoint Federal Judges. The main reason why these jobs are very contested for and sought after by many is because of how the justices have terms for their entire life.. The lesser reason why a lot people and employees in Washington care so much as to who gets appointed is the case that they play a very big part in the public’s policy making. Judicial review is the primary role of the federal courts to discuss back and forth if a law is unconstitutional. Judicial review can also regulate the acts or behaviors that the Executive and Judicial carry out in legislation and the Courts may choose to declare those actions taken by the other branches or not those actions are unconstitutional or not. Judicial review is also the main source of power in the Supreme court 's. It has the option to bar the Executive and the Judiciary to fulfill what checks and balances set out to complete. Many people in the U.S. think that judicial review has power no doubt but, the people want to know how it is applied in our government specifically.The courts could use judicial review power in two ways during the fight to confirm Clarence Thomas: a strict-constructionist approach is an option where judges will only have the power to judge based only on what is implied on the constitution (non elastic). The other argument says that judges should try to use powers that are not specifically mentioned

Since 95 percent of the legal disputes in the United States are settled in State Courts2, it is important to learn if judicial elections are impeding the impartiality of the judiciary. The state of Alabama has partisan judicial election i.e. the judicial candidates declare their political affiliations before election and even after winning for a position they have to maintain public support to retain their seats. Because of this, as mentioned by Bryan Stevenson in his book ‘Just Mercy’, judges in Alabama frequently override jury recommendations into more severe punishment so as to appear ‘hard on crime’ and gather public support for their next election. These severe implications of judicial elections render this issue an unparalleled significance because of which I have chosen to work on

First and foremost, I strongly agree with judicial review and believe that is it very necessary. The supreme court is in my opinion the most impartial group of people in government and as stated in the video, they seldom use their power to declare laws unconstitutional because they want to remain that way. I believe that although they are not granted such powers in the constitution, that because they have yet to abuse them, then there is no reason that we should do away with them. Judicial review is also only about the legality of a proposed law rather than how a justice feels about it personally and given that, I trust that they will uphold the constitution and do what is right. The only disadvantage that I can possibly think of is if the

The Supreme Court provides for an interesting branch of research as the Justices are unelected by the people in a democratic society. The President will appoint the Justices based on a variety of reasons, party loyalty, legal background, ideology, and more, then will be either approved or not approved through the Senate. However, despite the public not having any direct choice in Justice picks, the public still holds a high level of support for the judiciary branch. The federal courts and the Supreme Court often do not face adversary from the public, and their case decisions are usually accepted by the people. This is due to a variety of reasons, explored in this research. Due to these theories and this phenomenon, I ask if the Supreme Court has the ability to change public opinion? Through a multi-layered methodology process, I will explore if this is possible and the impact that this will have on future research, while also supporting legitimacy theory and salience theory.