Judicial Review and Contemporary Democratic Theory

About this book

"For decades, the question of judicial review’s status in a democratic political system has been adjudicated through the framework of what Alexander Bickel labeled 'the counter-majoritarian difficulty.' That is, the idea that judicial review is particularly problematic for democracy because it opposes the will of the majority. [This book] begins with an assessment of the empirical and theoretical flaws of this framework, and an account of the ways in which this framework has hindered meaningful investigation into judicial review’s value within a democratic political system. To replace the counter-majoritarian difficulty framework, [the authors] draw on recent work in democratic theory emphasizing democracy’s opposition to domination and analyses of constitutional court cases in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere to examine judicial review in its institutional and political context."--