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Compared To What? Judicial Review And Other Veto Points In Contemporary Political Theory, David Watkins, Scott E. Lemieux
Compared To What? Judicial Review And Other Veto Points In Contemporary Political Theory, David Watkins, Scott E. Lemieux
Political Science Faculty Publications
Many democratic and jurisprudential theorists have too often uncritically accepted Alexander Bickel’s notion of “the countermajoritarian difficulty” when considering the relationship between judicial review and democracy; this is the case for arguments both for and against judicial review. This framework is both theoretically and empirically unsustainable. Democracy is not wholly synonymous with majoritarianism, and judicial review is not inherently countermajoritarian in the first place.
In modern democratic political systems, judicial review is one of many potential veto points. Since all modern democratic political systems contain veto points, the relevant and unexplored question is what qualities might make a veto point …
Separations Of Wealth: Inequality And The Erosion Of Checks And Balances, Kate Andrias
Separations Of Wealth: Inequality And The Erosion Of Checks And Balances, Kate Andrias
Faculty Scholarship
American government is dysfunctional: Gridlock, filibusters, and expanding presidential power, everyone seems to agree, threaten our basic system of constitutional governance. Who, or what, is to blame? In the standard account, the fault lies with the increasing polarization of our political parties. That standard story, however, ignores an important culprit: Concentrated wealth and its organization to achieve political ends. The only way to understand our current constitutional predicament – and to rectify it – is to pay more attention to the role that organized wealth plays in our system of checks and balances.
This Article shows that the increasing concentration …