Abstract
The countermajoritarian difficulty assumes that the democratically elected branches are majoritarian and the unelected Supreme Court is not. But sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes it is the elected branches that are out of sync with majority will and the Supreme Court that bridges the gap, turning the conventional understanding of the Court's role on its head. Instead of a countermajoritarian Court checking the majoritarian branches, we see a majoritarian Court checking the not-so-majoritarian branches, enforcing prevailing norms when the representative branches do not. What emerges is a distinctly majoritarian, upside-down understanding of judicial review. This Article illustrates, explains, and explores the contours of this understanding, using three classic cases of the countermajoritarian difficulty—Brown v. Board of Education, Furman v. Georgia, and Roe v. Wade-to anchor the discussion. Democracy never looked so undemocratic, nor (in an upside-down way) has it ever worked so well.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2012
Recommended Citation
Corinna Barrett Lain, Upside-Down Judicial Review, 101 Geo. L. J. 113 (2012).