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Saint Louis University School of Law

2023

Legitimacy

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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Supreme Court, Question-Selection, Legitimacy, And Reform: Three Theorems And One Suggestion, Benjamin B. Johnson Jan 2023

The Supreme Court, Question-Selection, Legitimacy, And Reform: Three Theorems And One Suggestion, Benjamin B. Johnson

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Legitimacy Without Legality, Or Bassok Jan 2023

Legitimacy Without Legality, Or Bassok

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Beyond the controversy on women’s right to elect an abortion, in Dobbs v. Jackson there is a deep yet hidden disagreement over the Court’s source of legitimacy. The majority judgment speaks of the Court’s source of legitimacy in terms of expertise, while the dissenting opinion speaks of it in terms of public support. My starting point for exposing this disagreement is the divergence between the accurate quote of Alexander Hamilton’s famous dictum from the Federalist No. 78 in Justice Alito’s majority opinion, and dissenting Justice Breyer’s paraphrase of the same dictum in the Dobbs oral arguments. The paraphrased version replaced …