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Policy Distortion And Democratic Debilitation: Comparative Illumination Of The Countermajoritarian Difficulty, Mark Tushnet

Michigan Law Review

James Bradley Thayer set the terms of the past century's discussion of judicial review in The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law. Thayer was concerned with what Alexander Bickel labeled the "countermajoritarian difficulty" with judicial review, that judicial review displaces decisions made by near-contemporaneous political majorities and therefore is open to the charge that it is undemocratic. Thayer attempted to minimize the displacement- of political majorities through his "clear error" rule, according to which courts should not overturn legislation unless "those who have the right to make laws have not merely made a mistake, but have …