American Politicians Confront the Court: Opposition Politics and Changing Responses to Judicial Power

Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgments......Page 8
Introduction Had Americans “Stopped Understanding about the Three Branches”?......Page 12
I. Courts, Parties, and the Politics of Opposition......Page 15
II. Moving Forward......Page 22
PART I POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT AND ELECTED-BRANCH RELATIONS WITH THE JUDICIARY......Page 28
1 Beyond the Countermajoritarian Difficulty......Page 30
I. The Countermajoritarian Difficulty and Four Responses......Page 31
I.a. Dahl’s Response: Countermajoritarianism Is Short-Lived......Page 33
I.b. Strategic Interest: Politicians Want Strong Judiciaries......Page 35
I.c. A Norm of Deference: An Account of Gradual Change over Time......Page 38
II. Manipulating the Court: Undermining Judicial Legitimacy or Harnessing Judicial Power......Page 42
III. Mapping Legislation: Patterns Over Time......Page 47
IV. Conclusion......Page 50
Appendix: Proposed Congressional Legislation Involving the Judiciary Disaggregated by Type......Page 51
2 A Developmental Theory of Politicians’ Confrontations with Judicial Authority......Page 54
I. The Presumption of Judicial Neutrality and Persistence of Anti-Judicial Hostilities......Page 57
II. Opposition Legitimacy and Loyalty as Manifestations of Political Idiom......Page 65
III. Multiple Constitutional Visions and the Rise of a Majoritarian Court......Page 75
IV. Conclusion......Page 78
PART II HOSTILITY TO JUDICIAL AUTHORITY AND THE POLITICAL IDIOM OF CIVIC REPUBLICANISM......Page 80
3 In Support of Unified Governance: Undermining the Court in an Anti-Party Age......Page 82
I. Judges as Representatives of Popular Sovereignty......Page 84
I.a. Accepting Judicial Review, Presuming Unity, and Fearing Consolidation......Page 86
I.b. Judges’ Early Steps to Secure Judicial Review......Page 91
I.c. Judicial Review as Discovering the Act of Popular Sovereignty......Page 95
II. An Age of Party Illegitimacy......Page 98
II.a. Not Just Anti-Partisan, but Anti-Party......Page 99
II.b. An Inherited Political Tradition Fearful of Open, Stable, and Permanent Opposition......Page 103
II.c. Sedition and the Kentucky Resolution: Hostility to Court-Centered Interpretation......Page 107
II.d. 1800: A Peaceful Transition but No Acceptance of Opposition Legitimacy or Loyalty......Page 111
III. The Jeffersonian Assault on the Judiciary......Page 115
III.a. Framing the Reform of 1801: Civil Stability versus Party Threat......Page 116
III.b. The Justices’ Failed Strike Plan and Their Concession......Page 120
IV. Impeaching Justice Samuel Chase and Neutrality as a Second-Best Solution......Page 124
IV.a. Impeachment as Removal of Illegitimate Opposition......Page 125
IV.b. Samuel Chase on Sedition and the Illegitimacy of Opposition......Page 130
IV.c. The Chase Impeachment: Toward Judicial Independence as Political Neutrality......Page 133
V. Conclusion......Page 140
4 Party against Partisanship: Single-Party Constitutionalism and the Quest for Regime Unity......Page 142
I. Unease with Opposition and Jacksonian Views of Judicial Authority......Page 145
I.b. Van Buren’s Democratic Party as Permanent Constitutional Majority......Page 149
I.c. Van Buren’s Party-based Justification of Jackson’s Relations with the Judiciary......Page 156
II. The Anti-Partyist Debate to Maintain Judicial Neutrality......Page 162
II.a. Judicial Reform: The Jeffersonian Construction of Political Neutrality as the New Paradigm......Page 164
II.b. Failure to Repeal Section 25: Securing Federal Supremacy not the Court......Page 170
II.c. Jacksonian Bench Expansion: Was It Harnessing Judicial Power?......Page 173
III. Judges as Disloyal Opposition: Van Buren on the Dred Scott Case......Page 174
IV. Conclusion......Page 178
5 “As Party Exigencies Require”: Republicanism, Loyal Opposition, and the Emerging Legitimacy of Multiple Constitutional Visions......Page 181
I.a. The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Constitutional Idea of the Republican Party......Page 183
I.b. The Southern Perspective: The Republican Conspiracy to Undermine the Constitution......Page 188
II. Lincoln: Popular Sovereignty, Constitutional Silence, and Minimal Constraint......Page 191
II.a. Holding Dred Scott’s Meaning at Bay by Embracing the Opposition’s Right to Rule......Page 192
II.b. Presidential Constitutional Interpretive Authority during the Civil War......Page 201
III. Manifestations of Congressional Republican Fears of Disloyal Opposition......Page 203
III.a. The Slave Power, Kansas, and Broadening Republican Appeal......Page 204
III.b. Fear of a Returning Slave Power: Suppressing Representation and Impeachment after Civil War......Page 206
III.c. Judiciary as Slave Power: Removing Southern Opposition during and after the Civil War......Page 210
IV. Congressional Republican Harnessing of Judicial Power......Page 215
IV.a. The Judiciary as a Policy Tool: Stripping Jurisdiction but Denying the Precedent......Page 216
IV.b. Judiciary as a Policy Tool: Judicial Expansion as Partisan Entrenchment......Page 223
IV.c. Reprise: Republicans Neither Fully Attack Nor Fully Embrace Judicial Power......Page 228
V. Conclusion......Page 230
PART III HARNESSING JUDICIAL POWER AND THE POLITICAL IDIOM OF LIBERAL PLURALISM......Page 234
6 Clashing Progressive Solutions to the Political Problem of Judicial Power......Page 236
I. Populism and the Lawyer Community’s Response......Page 240
I.a. Weaver’s and Bryan’s Lincolnian Refrains......Page 241
I.b. Responding to the Populist Threat: Lawyers Re-Imagine Marbury to Strengthen Judicial Review......Page 246
II. Constitution as Obstacle or Instrument: Progressive Confusion about Courts......Page 247
II.a. Progressive Jeffersonianism: Anti-Partyism, Judicial Legitimacy, and Judicial Recall......Page 249
II.b. The Progressives’ Lincolnian Refrain: Living Constitutionalism and Decision Recall......Page 253
II.c. Working with the System: Women’s Legislation and Substantive Due Process......Page 260
III.a. Congressional Jurisdiction-Stripping and Ambiguous Statutory Language......Page 264
III.a.1. Purposive Ambiguity of the Clayton Act.......Page 266
III.a.2. The Jurisdiction-Stripping Redundancy of the Norris-LaGuardia Act.......Page 270
III.b. FDR’s Plan: Fears of Dictatorship and Evidence of Longer Term Time Horizons......Page 272
IV. Recasting its Purpose: The Court’s Lincolnian Refrain in Blaisdell and the Pluralism of Adkins and Carolene......Page 283
IV.a. Blaisdell: Living Constitutionalism and the Eclipse of Nineteenth-Century Textual Originalism......Page 285
IV.b. Carolene: The Court’s Adjustment to the Political Assumptions of Liberal Pluralism......Page 288
V. Conclusion......Page 292
7 A Polity Fully Developed for Harnessing (I)
Living Constitutionalism and the Politicization of Judicial Appointment......Page 296
I. The Near Misses of Jurisdiction-Stripping in the 1950s......Page 299
I.a. Isolated Southern Reactions to Brown v. Board of Education......Page 300
I.b. Forging an Anti-Court Coalition beyond the Segregated South......Page 303
I.c. Court-Curbing Legislation in the 85th Congress......Page 307
II. Nixon: Judicial Impeachment, Stripping Jurisdiction, and Appointment Power......Page 313
II.a. Nixonian Harnessing: Judicial Appointment, Impeachments, and the Southern Strategy......Page 314
II.b. Fungible Legislation and Attacking Integrative School Busing Schemes......Page 320
II.c. Passing Redundant, Ambiguous, and Symbolic Court-Curbing Legislation......Page 328
III. Appointment and Obstruction: Maintaining Vacancies to Harness Judicial Power......Page 334
III.a. Jimmy Carter Politicizes the Lower Federal Judiciary......Page 335
III.b. Obstruction: Majority Party Committee Action and Minority Party Filibusters......Page 340
IV. Conclusion......Page 345
8 A Polity Fully Developed for Harnessing (II) A Conservative Insurgency Innovates and a Self-Styled Majoritarian Court Responds......Page 348
I. Originalism: Reviving an Interpretive Method in order to Harness Judicial Power......Page 351
II. Reagan’s Legacy: the G.W. Bush Administration’s Harnessing of Judicial Power......Page 358
II.a. Signing Statements as Tools to Harness Judicial Power......Page 359
II.b. Jurisdiction-Stripping to Win the War on Terror: A Case of Judicial Supremacy?......Page 365
III. The Majoritarian Court......Page 373
III.a. Three Examples of the Majoritarian Court......Page 374
III.b. The Majortiarian Court and the Permanent Campaign against Judges......Page 378
IV. Conclusion......Page 380
Conclusion On the Return of Opposition Illegitimacy and the Prospects for New Development......Page 383
I. The Themes of this Book and the Prospects for Change......Page 386
II. Taking Responsibility for a Politicized Court......Page 392
Index......Page 396