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Full-Text Articles in Judges
Majoritarian Difficulty And Theories Of Constitutional Decision Making, Michael C. Dorf
Majoritarian Difficulty And Theories Of Constitutional Decision Making, Michael C. Dorf
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Recent scholarship in political science and law challenges the view that judicial review in the United States poses what Alexander Bickel famously called the "counter-majoritarian difficulty." Although courts do regularly invalidate state and federal action on constitutional grounds, they rarely depart substantially from the median of public opinion. When they do so depart, if public opinion does not eventually come in line with the judicial view, constitutional amendment, changes in judicial personnel, and/or changes in judicial doctrine typically bring judicial understandings closer to public opinion. But if the modesty of courts dissolves Bickel's worry, it raises a distinct one: Are …
Judicial Recusal & Expanding Notions Of Due Process, Andrey Spektor, Michael A. Zuckerman
Judicial Recusal & Expanding Notions Of Due Process, Andrey Spektor, Michael A. Zuckerman
Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers
The merits of judicial elections have been litigated in journals around the country. In light of the recent Supreme Court decisions in White and Caperton, this debate will only intensify. Rather than revisit the arguments for and against electing judges, this Article argues that applying the Mathews v. Eldridge test in cases where a litigant’s due process is threatened by an elected judge—a possibility that the Court initially dismissed in White against Justice Ginsburg’s protests, and then took head on in Caperton—will balance First Amendment rights that judicial elections breed against the rights of the litigants that the Constitution protects. …