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Full-Text Articles in Law
Judicial Populism, Anya Bernstein, Glen Staszewski
Judicial Populism, Anya Bernstein, Glen Staszewski
Journal Articles
Populism has taken center stage in discussions of contemporary politics. This Article details a judicial populism that resonates with political populism’s tropes, mirrors its traits, and enables its practices. Like political populism, judicial populism insists there are clear, correct answers to complex, debatable problems, treating reasonable disagreement as illegitimate. It disparages the institutions that mediate divergent interests in a republican democracy, claiming special access to the law’s clear objective meaning. And it imagines a pure, unified people locked in battle with a subversive elite.
While commentators have recognized political populism as fundamentally undemocratic, judicial populism has largely escaped recognition and …
The Illiberalization Of American Election Law: A Study In Democratic Deconsolidation, James A. Gardner
The Illiberalization Of American Election Law: A Study In Democratic Deconsolidation, James A. Gardner
Journal Articles
For many years, the dominant view among American election law scholars has been that the U.S. Supreme Court’s constitutional jurisprudence of democratic practice got off to a promising start during the mid-twentieth century but has since then slowly deteriorated into incoherence. In light of the United States’ recent turn toward populist authoritarianism, that view needs to be substantially revised. With the benefit of hindsight, it now appears that the Supreme Court has functioned, in its management of the constitutional jurisprudence of democracy, as a vector of infection—a kind of super-spreader of populist authoritarianism.
There is, sadly, nothing unusual these days …