POLS 4050 Chapter Notes - Chapter Article: William Rehnquist, Tom Tyler, Desegregation Busing
6 Feb 2017
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Making policy, making law: an interbranch perspective is judicial. Policymaking countermajoritarian: when striking down federal and state legislation, the supreme court is often described as. In this chapter, i argue that judicial invalidation of statutes is often tied to majoritarian social and political forces. The non-majoritarian difficulty: when striking down legislation, the supreme court almost always takes its cues from elected officials, the public, or elites. In the next section of this chapter, i will explain how court decision making is inextricably linked to social and political forces. Elected officials" preferences: not only does the public sometimes support judicial invalidations of legislation, elected officials sometimes embrace countermajoritarian judicial review, popular opposition to legislation is hardly a proxy for lawmaker opposition to legislation. It is often the case, however, that lawmakers are quite happy to leave a contentious social policy issue in the court"s hands. How social and political forces shape court decision making:
