Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network
Judicial Activism: An Empirical Examination Of Voting Behavior On The Rehnquist Natural Court, Lori A. Ringhand
Judicial Activism: An Empirical Examination Of Voting Behavior On The Rehnquist Natural Court, Lori A. Ringhand
Scholarly Works
This paper attempts to quantify one of the most deeply contested terms in constitutional law: “judicial activism.” Most discussions of “judicial activism” define activism either in reference to a particular political ideology (such as complaints about “liberal activist judges”) or a particular method of constitutional interpretation (such as assertions that a decision was “activist” because it was not based on the original meaning of the Constitution). This paper sidesteps those debates, focusing instead on an empirical examination of how recent U.S. Supreme Court justices have in fact exercised their judicial power. I do this by examining the voting records of …
The Rehnquist Court, Structural Due Process, And Semisubstantive Constitutional Review, Dan T. Coenen
The Rehnquist Court, Structural Due Process, And Semisubstantive Constitutional Review, Dan T. Coenen
Scholarly Works
Semisubstantive review, as I use that label, entails four key features. First, the subject matter of judicial inquiry is not the process applied in adjudicating a discrete dispute; rather, the matter at hand is the constitutionality of a statute or other generalized expression of legal policy. Second, some procedural omission by the lawmaker -- rather than an incurably substantive flaw in the end product of its work -- lays the groundwork for a judicial intervention that invalidates the challenged rule or negates how that rule otherwise would operate. It may be, for example, that a federal statute read as a …