The case for ending judicial review
Is it time to sap some of the Supreme Court's power?


Forget packing the court. What if the U.S. Supreme Court was neutered, instead?
It's a possibility. A presidential commission considering reforms to the court last Wednesday heard from Nikolas Bowie, an associate professor at Harvard Law School. He argued that it is time to end the high court's power of "judicial review," which gives it the authority to declare a law unconstitutional and thus usually gives SCOTUS the last word in battles with the legislative and executive branches.
The Supreme Court's "relationship to Congress is not that of an umpire overseeing a batter, but of a rider overseeing a horse," Bowie told the commission in his written testimony. "Most of the time, the court gives Congress free rein to act as it pleases. But the court remains in the saddle, ready to pull on the reins when Congress moves to disrupt hierarchies of wealth or status."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
When President Biden appointed the commission in April, public and media attention focused mostly on progressive hopes to pack the court with additional justices — the new seats to be occupied by Democratic appointees, of course — and reverse the court's conservative tilt. As Bowie's testimony indicates, the commission is actually considering a much wider array of possible changes to the judicial branch.
And the conversation involves more than mere technical changes, like court size or term limits for justices. Instead, it strikes at the very heart of the Supreme Court's role in American governance, politics, and culture. Without judicial review, can the court be the court?
Judicial review, of course, is mentioned nowhere explicitly in the Constitution — the court claimed that authority for itself in Marbury v. Madison in 1803. "It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is," Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in the ruling. The precedent has stood for more than 200 years.
Whether that should be the case is now an open question. Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law professor and Bloomberg Opinion columnist, acknowledged in his own testimony that judicial review had made the Supreme Court more powerful than the Founders intended. "It is therefore fair to say that the founding generation did not fully anticipate the modern practice of robust judicial review," he said, "that both empowers the judiciary to protect rights and democratic norms and simultaneously renders the judiciary more capable of harming democracy than it would be without it."
Bowie argued that the Supreme Court has, in fact, harmed democracy and set back the cause of political equality. Over the last two centuries, the court has used its power to strike down or narrow federal laws that limited the spread of slavery, discourged child labor, protected voting rights, and restricted the role of big money in politics. Defenders of the Supreme Court's power say justices can protect political minorities from congressional attempts to step on their rights, but Bowie said that theory has rarely worked in practice.
"The court has been silent at best when Congress and the president have violently dispossessed Native tribes, excluded Chinese immigrants, persecuted political dissidents, withheld civil rights from U.S. citizens in territories, and banned Muslim refugees," he said. Combined with the lifetime terms for justices, he said, "the political choices available to us as a country depend not on our collective will, but on the will of people who hold their offices until they resign or die. This is precisely what the Declaration of Independence protested."
Bowie's comments reflect a growing progressive skepticism about the Supreme Court's powers, a trend that may have started when the court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, and accelerated over recent years as Republicans cemented a 6-3 supermajority on the high court, jump-started by their refusal to hold a vote on Merrick Garland's 2016 nomination to court. After last Thursday's controversial voting rights decision, Democrats are even more motivated to rein in the court. "The United States may not be a 'pure democracy,' but it's not a judgeocracy either," The New York Times' Jamelle Bouie wrote last year. His complaint echoed Republican cries of "judicial activism" and "judicial tyranny" that were common as recently as 10 years ago, when gay marriage was advancing in the courts, but which seem to have mostly subsided as the court's conservatives fortified their power.
The current debate raises a few questions. If the Supreme Court didn't have the last word on Constitutional disputes, who would? (Bowie noted that the U.K. and Switzerland are democracies that have done fine without similarly empowered courts.) And how, exactly, could judicial review be ended? SCOTUS is unlikely to reverse Marbury on its own — who gives up their authority willingly? — and a Senate that can't even fix itself by undoing the filibuster probably won't find a way to radically recompose the court's powers.
Perhaps that is just as well. "We collectively have much more to gain by preserving the institutional legitimacy of the Supreme Court than by breaking it," Feldman said in his testimony. "Whatever alternative designs might once have existed in theory, sapping that power would, in practice, leave the current system with no institutional actor capable of protecting the rule of law, fundamental rights, or the structure of democracy and motivated to do so." After 200 years, it might be too late — and too messy — to sideline the highest court in the land.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Joel Mathis is a writer with 30 years of newspaper and online journalism experience. His work also regularly appears in National Geographic and The Kansas City Star. His awards include best online commentary at the Online News Association and (twice) at the City and Regional Magazine Association.
-
Trump 'not joking' about unconstitutional 3rd term
Speed Read The president seems to be serious about seeking a third term in 2028
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Myanmar quake deaths rise as survivor search intensifies
speed read The magnitude-7.7 earthquake in central Myanmar has killed a documented 2,000 people so far, and left scores more trapped beneath rubble
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
'We should end this betrayal of man's best friend'
Instant Opinion 'Opinion, comment and editorials of the day'
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
'Like a sound from hell': Serbia and sonic weapons
The Explainer Half a million people sign petition alleging Serbian police used an illegal 'sound cannon' to disrupt anti-government protests
By Abby Wilson Published
-
The arrest of the Philippines' former president leaves the country's drug war in disarray
In the Spotlight Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by the ICC earlier this month
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
Ukrainian election: who could replace Zelenskyy?
The Explainer Donald Trump's 'dictator' jibe raises pressure on Ukraine to the polls while the country is under martial law
By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published
-
Why Serbian protesters set off smoke bombs in parliament
THE EXPLAINER Ongoing anti-corruption protests erupted into full view this week as Serbian protesters threw the country's legislature into chaos
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Who is the Hat Man? 'Shadow people' and sleep paralysis
In Depth 'Sleep demons' have plagued our dreams throughout the centuries, but the explanation could be medical
By The Week Staff Published
-
Was Jimmy Carter America's best ex-president?
Today's Big Question Carter's presidency was marred by the Iran hostage crisis, but his work in the decades after leaving office won him global acclaim
By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published
-
Why Assad fell so fast
The Explainer The newly liberated Syria is in an incredibly precarious position, but it's too soon to succumb to defeatist gloom
By The Week UK Published
-
Romania's election rerun
The Explainer Shock result of presidential election has been annulled following allegations of Russian interference
By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published