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Adjudication As Representation, Christopher J. Peters

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This Article sets forth an interpretive theory of adjudicative lawmaking according to which, under certain conditions, such lawmaking ensures constructive participation through interest representation and thus is not inherently nondemocratic. The author contends that the idea of ‘judicial activism,‘ courts deciding issues better left to political processes or substituting the personal ‘values‘ of judges for law, is based on the incorrect assumptions that courts are unconstrained and nonrepresentative. Instead, when adjudication operates in an archetypal way, it produces law in a manner similar to the parliamentary legislation process. Courts making law are constrained by the process of participatory decisionmaking--the production …