Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View

Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View

Language: English

Pages: 288

ISBN: 0307390837

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Charged with the responsibility of interpreting the Constitution, the Supreme Court has the awesome power to strike down laws enacted by our elected representatives. Why does the public accept the Court’s decisions as legitimate and follow them, even when those decisions are highly unpopular? What must the Court do to maintain the public’s faith? How can it help make our democracy work?
 
In this groundbreaking book, Justice Stephen Breyer tackles these questions and more, offering an original approach to interpreting the Constitution that judges, lawyers, and scholars will look to for many years to come.

Rebalancing Society: Radical Renewal Beyond Left, Right, and Center

The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution And Why We Need It More Than Ever

The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present

The Prettier Doll: Rhetoric, Discourse, and Ordinary Democracy (Rhetoric Culture and Social Critique)

The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution And Why We Need It More Than Ever

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In doing so, the Court will reach decisions that take advantage of both its own and other institutions’ comparative competences and experience. Those decisions may well garner political support from other branches—the kind of support that flows from an individual’s understanding that his or her interests have been addressed even where they have not proved determinative. This is all to the good—simply one more reason why these decisions will likely work well and prove effective in practice. I do.

However. The point remains that the Court’s power to give binding effect to a constitutional interpretation is virtually ironclad. This power often concerns matters of great importance to the nation, and it can well place the Court and other governmental institutions at loggerheads. Consider the Court’s reapportionment decisions, which radically changed previous methods for drawing election district boundaries and consequently changed election results in many states; or its “affirmative action”.

Or modified stationary sources” of pollution in regions of the country that had not yet met the statute’s clean air goals. The EPA had developed a system of regulation that in effect treated each machine that emitted a pollutant as a separate “source” that must meet a specified standard. The EPA then changed its system so that it no longer treated each machine as a separate source. Instead, hoping to achieve greater efficiency, the EPA placed an imaginary “bubble” over a factory and treated all.

Liability will sometimes mean a safer product (when the words properly identify a further risk) and sometimes a riskier product (when the requirement leads drugmakers to modify an otherwise adequate drug label, confusing consumers and thereby making all labels less effective). Can the basic federalism or subsidiarity principles help? They tell us to leave matters at the local level unless federal regulation is needed. But once again we need considerable factual and technical knowledge about how.

That change a major issue. Thus judges sometimes think that they themselves should overturn a case that they believe is wrong or when change will probably never take place.13 Second, the Court does not have many opportunities to overturn earlier cases. The Court fully hears only about eighty cases per year, very few of which require or permit the Court to reconsider a previously decided case the Court believes is wrong. Those that do involve such a case may fail to meet other criteria, such as a.

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