Judicial Majoritarianism

Author(s): Matthew E. K. Hall and Joseph Daniel Ura

Source: The Journal of Politics , Vol. 77, No. 3 (July 2015), pp. 818-832
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science
Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/681437

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Judicial Majoritarianism
Matthew E. K. Hall, University of Notre Dame
Joseph Daniel Ura, Texas A&M University

For decades, constitutional theorists have confronted the normative problems associated with judicial review by an
unelected judiciary; yet some political scientists contend that judicial review actually tends to promote majoritarian
interests. We evaluate the majoritarian nature of judicial review and test the political foundations that shape this
process. To do so, we construct a statute-centered data set of every important federal law enacted from 1949 through
2008 and estimate the probability of a law being challenged and subsequently invalidated by the Supreme Court. Our
methodological approach overcomes problems of selection bias and facilitates a test of judicial majoritarianism and the
mechanisms that drive that behavior. We find that the Court tends to invalidate laws with little support from elected
officials and that this pattern is primarily driven by the justices’ concern for congressional constraint during the
certiorari stage.

T he tension between democratic values and judicial re-

view is perhaps the most important problem in con-
temporary constitutional theory. The resulting fric-
tion is most famously articulated by Alexander Bickel: “The
root difficulty is that judicial review is a countermajoritarian
rather than as an oppositional or countermajoritarian in-
stitution (1957, 293). Following this line of thinking, schol-
ars have argued that judicial review may legitimize majori-
tarian policies (Dahl 1957; Ura 2014), preserve legislative
bargains (Landes and Posner 1975), remove legislative ob-
force in our system”; consequently, judicial review is said stacles to political change (Whittington 2005), promote
to suffer from a “countermajoritarian difficulty” that makes partisan goals (Clayton and Pickerill 2006; Gillman 2002),
it a “deviant institution in the American democracy” (1986, facilitate policy implementation (Rogers 2001), and help
16–18). This normative dilemma has served as a focal point legislators avoid taking unpopular positions (Fox and Ste-
for American constitutional theory for the last half-century phenson 2011; Graber 1993).
(Friedman 2002).1 These competing views offer distinct predictions about
Despite prominent and persistent attention to Bickel’s interactions between the Supreme Court and Congress. If
difficulty, many scholars challenge his premise that judicial judicial review is a countermajoritarian institution, the in-
review necessarily “thwarts the will of representatives of the validation of federal laws should be unrelated to congres-
actual people of the here and now” (1986, 17; see Friedman sional preferences. If, however, the Court tends to promote
2009). Instead, these scholars argue that the US Supreme majoritarian interests as part of the “dominant alliance,”
Court’s use of judicial review—including the invalidation of the invalidation of laws with majority support should be
federal laws—tends to promote majoritarian interests, es- relatively rare. The tension between these views poses a
pecially the interests of legislative majorities. For example, critical theoretical puzzle with important implications for
Robert Dahl suggests that the Court is best understood as the study of judicial behavior, the separation of powers, and
“an essential part . . . of the dominant [governing] alliance” constitutional law. A countermajoritarian Court might be

Matthew E. K. Hall (matt.hall@nd.edu) is an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and an assistant professor of law (by courtesy)
University of Notre Dame, 217 O’Shaughnessy Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556. Joseph Daniel Ura (jura@tamu.edu) is an associate professor, director of
undergraduate studies, and director of the American Politics Program at the Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University, 4348 TAMU, College
Station, TX 77845.
Data and supporting materials necessary to reproduce the numerical results in the paper are available in the JOP Dataverse (https://dataverse.harvard
.edu/dataverse/jop). An online appendix containing supplemental analyses is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/681437.
1. The “difficulty” has also attracted growing international attention (Hirschl 2002).

The Journal of Politics, volume 77, number 3. Published online April 27, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/681437
q 2015 by the Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved. 0022-3816/2015/7703-0017$10.00 818

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 Volume 77 Number 3 July 2015 / 819

expected to reliably protect political minorities—who are lawmakers with regard to specific public policies. Instead,
often also racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual minorities— this pattern appears to be driven by the justices’ concern for
against policies that might violate their rights. In contrast, a ideological constraint. The Court tends to avoid challeng-
majoritarian judiciary might only protect minority rights as ing congressional majorities when it is ideologically distant
an incidental by-product of convergence between majority from the sitting Congress and, therefore, may more broadly
and minority interests (Bell 1979) or a majority’s interests fear sanctions or nonimplementation.
in preserving the institution of judicial review for its own Together these findings provide important evidence for
purposes (Rogers and Ura 2011; Whittington 2007). a continued reevaluation of the role of judicial power in
Our goal is to adjudicate between these theoretical claims American politics. The Supreme Court is, in practice, a ma-
in order to better understand the nature of judicial review. joritarian institution. The Court rarely hears challenges to
To do so, we consider three questions: (i) Is the Supreme laws with congressional support and, in doing so, implic-
Court’s exercise of judicial review best characterized as ma- itly upholds those laws without hearing the complaints of
joritarian or countermajoritarian? If judicial review is typi- injured parties. By side-stepping confrontations with Con-
cally majoritarian, (ii) when in the Court’s decision making gress, the Court acts more like a part of the “dominant [gov-
process does this pattern emerge, and (iii) which political erning] alliance” than a “countermajoritarian force in our
and institutional mechanisms drive judicial majoritarianism? system.” Moreover, the normative “difficulties” created by
To answer these questions, we construct a data set of judicial review are more apt to follow from the Court’s ten-
every important federal statute enacted from 1949 to 2008 dency to defer to Congress than the possibility of thwarting
and test the relationship between lawmakers’ preferences the people’s representatives.
and judicial review of those statutes in a duration framework.
Next, we estimate a Heckman two-stage grouped duration JUDICIAL COUNTERMAJORITARIANISM?
model of the Court’s decisions to, first, hear challenges to A half-century ago, Alexander Bickel framed one of the cen-
important laws and, subsequently, invalidate all or part of tral problems in modern constitutional theory. According
the laws they consider. Finally, we evaluate two mechanisms to Bickel, “Coherent, stable—and morally supportable—
that may drive judicial majoritarianism: (i) shared prefer- government is possible only on the basis of consent” (1986,
ences between justices and lawmakers and (ii) the justices’ 20); yet “when the Supreme Court declares unconstitutional
concern for ideological constraint. Our approach combines a legislative act . . . it thwarts the will of representatives of
two recent methodological innovations in the study of ju- the actual people of the here and now” (17). Thus, “It is dif-
dicial review: centering analysis on statutes rather than cases ficult to escape the conclusion that judicial review is mod-
(Harvey and Friedman 2006, 2009) and estimating current erately countermajoritarian, and to that extent, in tension
support for statutes based on roll call votes (Segal, Wester- with the principle of majority rule” (Klarman 1997, 495).
land, and Lindquist 2011). The former mitigates problems of Since then, constitutional scholars have been preoccupied—
selection bias that may confound inferences based only on some say obsessed (Friedman 2002; Keck 2007, 513)—with
cases the Court has agreed to hear. The latter elucidates the resolving the apparent tension between judicial review and
relationship between lawmakers’ preferences and judicial representative democracy. Yet a growing body of research
decisions regarding specific public laws. Together these ap- casts doubt on this assumption. Even before Bickel posed
proaches provide a powerful analytic framework for ad- his normative dilemma, Robert Dahl found that the Court
dressing a critical puzzle in the study of judicial behavior and rarely invalidated federal laws and that those it did were out-
American constitutional law. dated or unimportant (1957). Instead, the Court generally
Our results indicate, first, that the US Supreme Court’s “supports the major policies of the [dominant national] al-
review of important public laws tends to promote majori- liance” (293).
tarian interests. The Court is less likely to invalidate im- Other scholars have gone “beyond Dahl’s classic dis-
portant statutes that enjoy greater support among current cussion . . . by pointing out that the judiciary can serve the
lawmakers. Second, the data show that this majoritarian pat- regime’s interest” (Gillman 2004, 377–78). This literature
tern is the product of the Court’s decisions at the agenda- suggests that “the justices almost never engage in policy-
setting stage; the Court rarely invalidates important laws making that challenges those power-holders who are in a
with strong majority support because the justices rarely hear position to assault their nominal independence” (Gillman
challenges to such laws. Finally, contrary to common views 2003, 251). In fact, “Rather than a check on majority power,
in the literature, judicial majoritarianism does not appear the federal courts often function as arenas for extending,
to be the result of shared preferences between justices and legitimizing, harmonizing, or protecting the policy agenda

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820 / Judicial Majoritarianism Matthew E. K. Hall and Joseph Daniel Ura

of political elites or groups within the dominant governing THE FOUNDATIONS OF JUDICIAL
coalition” (Clayton and Pickerill 2006, 1391; see Whitting- MAJORITARIANISM
ton 2005, 582). A long series of studies suggests that elected Judicial review may tend to advance majority interests; how-
officials have used courts to promote their interests in sev- ever, majoritarian accounts are divided about the political
eral policy domains, such as civil rights (Frymer 2003; Mc- and institutional mechanisms that produce this pattern. The
Mahon 2004), criminal justice (Clayton and Pickerill 2006), literature suggests two principal foundations for judicial
federalism (Clayton and Pickerill 2004), and economics majoritarianism: (i) shared preferences between justices and
(Gillman 2002; Pickerill 2009).2 lawmakers and (ii) the justices’ concern for ideological con-
The Supreme Court may promote the interests of elected straint.3 Prior treatments of these mechanisms have focused
officials in a variety of ways. It may lend legitimacy to poli- on the merits stage (when the Court decides the substantive
cies, resolve unimportant policy questions, or enforce na- legal issues); however, these factors may also influence de-
tional policies against outlier states (Dahl 1957; Whittington cisions at the certiorari, or “cert,” stage (when the Court
2007; but see Hall and Black 2013). The Court can even decides whether to hear a case).4
promote majority interests by invalidating important federal
laws. For example, the Court might “void statutes passed Shared preferences
by previous governing coalitions, thus displacing the cur- First, justices may tend to advance majoritarian interests
rent legislative baseline” (Whittington 2005, 584), or “pro- simply because they often share the preferences of law-
tect the ‘in-party’ when it temporarily loses power” (Peretti makers. Dahl’s explanation for this phenomenon is straight-
2003, 367; see Whittington 2005, 589–91). The Court may forward: the judicial appointment process ensures that “the
also invalidate laws enacted during periods of divided gov- policy views dominant on the Court are never for long out
ernment when the dominant regime is forced to accept un- of line with the policy views dominant among the law-
palatable legislative compromises (Lovell 2003; Peretti 2003, making majorities of the United States” (1957, 285). Presi-
367; Whittington 2005, 589–91) or laws passed in unusual dents and senators tend to select judges with shared pref-
political circumstances that do not reflect the majority’s erences, and judges tend to make decisions in line with their
persistent interests (Graber 1993). The Court can also strike own preferences (Moraski and Shipan 1999; Segal and Spaeth
down laws that produce unanticipated consequences (Rog- 2002). Accordingly, many scholars agree with Dahl that “the
ers 2001) or that threaten to undermine political bargains Supreme Court will generally support policies passed by the
that preserve majority coalitions (Landes and Posner 1975). dominant law-making coalition [due to] the shared values
Indeed, legislatures “may effectively delegate a range of tasks that the appointment process produces” (Segal and Spaeth
to a judicial agent” (Whittington 2005, 584). 2002, 413).
Taken together, these studies pose a fundamental chal- The justices may also tend to share the preferences of
lenge to the countermajoritarian difficulty by suggesting that elected officials because the justices respond to the same
it “rests upon a descriptively inaccurate foundation” (Fried- social forces that shape public opinion (Giles, Blackstone,
man 1993, 580). Political support for judicial review may and Vining 2008). Because lawmakers also tend to follow
arise endogenously within legislative majorities as a mech- public opinion, the Court and the elected branches may
anism to advance that majority’s interests. If so, 50 years of frequently find themselves in agreement about the most im-
constitutional theory have been misdirected (but see Gold- portant policy questions (Casillas, Enns, and Wohlfarth 2011;
stein and Howe 2011; Pildes 2011). Indeed, this literature McGuire and Stimson 2004). Consequently, the justices may
suggests that a principal shortcoming of judicial review may tend to promote majority interests as they pursue their own
be a “majoritarian difficulty” in which “judges are unlikely policy preferences. If so, we should observe judicial majori-
to stand up for the civil rights of truly marginalized groups”
(Dorf 2010, 287; see also Croley 1995).

3. Some scholars also suggest that the Court rationally anticipates the
2. Other scholars object to characterizing judicial review as either possibility of Congress overriding constitutional decisions through ordi-
principally countermajoritarian or majoritarian. Bennett (2001), e.g., re- nary statute (e.g., Epstein, Knight, and Martin 2001; Meernik and Ignagni
jects the notion of a static “majority’’ represented by elected officials that 1997); however, recent evidence casts serious doubt on this argument
can be thwarted by judicial review (see also Friedman 2009; Lovell 2003). (Blackstone 2013; Segal and Spaeth 2002; Segal et al. 2011).
Alternatively, Baum and Devins argue that Supreme Court justices are 4. Following Epstein, Segal, and Victor (2002), the subsequent dis-
motivated by a desire for approval from “academics, journalists, and other cussion assumes that justices and lawmakers have symmetric, single-
elites” rather than the preferences of majorities or the rights of minorities peaked preferences over a common left-right policy dimension and gen-
(2010, 1,516). erally make decisions in pursuit of these preferences.

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 Volume 77 Number 3 July 2015 / 821

tarianism when the justices agree with lawmakers on spe- 2009), we use statutes as our unit of analysis. This strategy
cific public policies. overcomes problems of selection bias common to most stud-
ies of judicial review. Second, following Segal et al. (2011),
we utilize congressional roll call votes on the original pas-
Ideological constraint
sage of public laws to estimate support for those laws on the
The justices may also be motivated by a concern for main-
Court and in the sitting Congress. This approach allows
taining the integrity of their institution. The elected branches
us to assess whether the Court’s use of judicial review is
possess significant capacity to influence the Court’s re-
consistent with congressional preferences and whether the
sources and discretion (McGuire 2004; Ura and Wohlfarth
Court’s preferences drive that association. Together these
2010), as well as directly sanction the Court or individual
strategies create a powerful analytic framework for identi-
justices (e.g., Court-packing or impeachment; Rosenberg
fying whether and how majoritarian pressures influence
1992). In some situations, elected officials may simply re-
the Supreme Court’s use of judicial review.
fuse to implement a ruling if the justices act contrary to their
interests (Hall 2011). Consequently, the justices may alter
A statute-centered approach
their behavior in order to avoid congressional rebukes
Most studies of judicial review focus on cases involving
(Owens, Wedeking, and Wohlfarth 2013; Vanberg 2001).
challenges to federal statutes (Hall 2014; Lindquist and Sol-
Accordingly, “In the context of judicial review, the justices
berg 2007; Sala and Spriggs 2004; Segal et al. 2011). Although
may be particularly sensitive to the preferences of those ac-
these studies provide valuable insights into the politics of
tors in the coordinate branches” (Lindquist and Solberg
judicial review, they suffer from selection bias. Because the
2007, 74).
Supreme Court sets its own agenda, challenges to federal
A wealth of evidence supports the ideological constraint
laws heard by the Court are not a random sample of poten-
theory (see Sala and Spriggs 2004; Segal 1997). For exam-
tial cases. If strategic considerations influence the justices
ple, the conservative Rehnquist Court invalidated more fed-
during the agenda-setting process, analyses that overlook
eral statutes after Republicans captured Congress in 1994
case selection may systematically underestimate and mis-
(Harvey and Friedman 2006), and the Court invalidates
identify external influence on the Court (see Black and Owens
fewer laws when Congress considers more Court-curbing
2009).
legislation (Clark 2009). In particular, the Court’s decisions
The Supreme Court’s agenda setting is a particularly im-
in judicial review cases may be influenced by congressional
portant place to look for strategic behavior. Although the
preferences (Lindquist and Solberg 2007), and this pattern
Court typically receives more than 8,000 petitions for writs
appears to be driven by the Court’s ideological distance from
of certiorari each year, the justices usually agree to hear
Congress (Segal et al. 2011). Congressional preferences may
fewer than 100 cases (US Courts 2012). In order to be heard
be especially influential when nonimplementation is likely
by the Court, a cert petition must receive votes from four
(Hall 2014). Of course, lawmakers are unlikely to attack their
justices, and cert votes are discretionary and secret. Con-
ideological allies due to a single countermajoritarian ruling.
sequently, the Court’s cert process is a particularly suitable
Accordingly, if the justices are driven by a concern for their
environment for strategic behavior.
institutional power, they should tend to avoid bucking ma-
Despite the importance of the cert process and its fa-
jority preferences when they face unfriendly lawmakers—
vorable conditions for strategic behavior, remarkably few
that is, when the Court is ideologically distant from Congress
studies have examined the influence of lawmakers’ prefer-
(Segal et al. 2011).
ences on the Court’s agenda setting. Epstein, Segal, and
Victor (2002) find that, when the justices are ideologically
DATA AND METHODS distant from Congress, the Court hears a higher proportion
Our goal is to answer three empirical questions central to of constitutional cases (which Congress cannot override),
constitutional theory and judicial politics: (i) Does the US as opposed to statutory cases (which it can override). How-
Supreme Court’s exercise of judicial review tend to promote ever, they examine only those cases the justices decided to
the interests of lawmaking majorities? If so, (ii) does this hear rather than all statutes that might have been challenged.
pattern emerge in the cert stage, the merits stage, or both, Owens examines “542 paid petitions coming out of a
and (iii) what mechanisms produce this pattern? To answer federal court of appeals that made the Supreme Court’s
these questions, we employ an analytic strategy combining discuss list during the 1953–93 terms in which the Court
two recent methodological innovations in the study of ju- was asked to interpret or exercise judicial review over a
dicial review. First, following Harvey and Friedman (2006, federal statute” (2010, 419). He finds no evidence of con-

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822 / Judicial Majoritarianism Matthew E. K. Hall and Joseph Daniel Ura

gressional or presidential influence on the Court’s agenda. when the Court is unconstrained, the probability of invali-
His study has the advantages of modeling individual justice dating a federal statute increases from 0.00036 to 0.00137.
votes and controlling for case-specific variables such as cir- We adopt a modified version of Harvey and Friedman’s
cuit splits and amicus curie activity. Yet the study also suf- (2006, 2009) statute-centered approach. This method over-
fers from potential selection bias because it ignores several comes problems of selection bias and enables us to distin-
factors that may influence whether a case appears on the guish between majoritarian patterns at the cert and merits
discuss list in the first place. A case’s appearance on the stages. Of course the justices cannot choose to review any
discuss list might be influenced by a litigant’s decision to law in any year; they must choose from challenges presented
file a case, the behavior of lower courts, the litigants’ deci- in cert petitions. Nonetheless, if the justices desire to in-
sions to appeal lower court rulings, the behavior of law validate a statue, it is likely that some potential litigant will
clerks as they recommend cases, and—most importantly— anticipate this desire and file a petition. In fact, the justices
the justices’ decisions to place cases on the list. Previous can signal their desires in other opinions, such as Justice
research has shown that litigants anticipate the behavior of Thomas’s concurrence in Printz v. United States (1997).
district court judges (Taha 2010), district court judges an- Therefore, our analysis proceeds on the assumption that the
ticipate the behavior of court of appeals judges (Randazzo Court will have access to appropriate cases should it prefer
2008), and court of appeals judges anticipate Supreme Court to rule on a law.
preferences when making decisions (Westerland et al. 2010). This approach is not without shortcomings. In particu-
Law clerks and individual justices probably also anticipate lar, it does not consider the many political, legal, and stra-
the Court’s future behavior as they make decisions regard- tegic considerations that shape the decisions of (potential)
ing the discuss list. Harvey and Friedman summarize this litigants to challenge the constitutionality of federal laws,
problem: “If litigants can anticipate which cases the Court of lower court judges to decide cases in ways that make
is less likely to take because of congressional hostility, then cert more or less likely, or of losing parties to petition the Su-
they should be less likely to appeal those cases in the first preme Court for cert. We are conscious of these limitations,
place. One would then be unlikely to observe the Court’s and we recognize that the Court’s decision to grant cert rep-
responsiveness to congressional preferences in the sample of resents the culmination of numerous complex strategic inter-
cases for which writs of certiorari are requested. Testing a actions that unfold in a variety of institutional settings over
model of congressional constraint on the Court’s docket by time. However, by focusing on statutes rather than cases and
using a sample of certiorari petitions thus may be an ill- modeling the result of that process, reflected in the Court’s
advised strategy” (2009, 576). decisions to grant cert, we are able to more precisely identify
Harvey and Friedman avoid the problem of selection bias the nature and degree of judicial majoritarianism. We likewise
by tracking every federal statute enacted between 1987 and identify a framework through which future research may in-
2001 and examining if and when the Court reviewed (2009) vestigate the influence of decisions that precede the certiorari
and invalidated (2006) each law. The authors find that the process on the ultimate fate of federal legislation. Thus, de-
Court is less likely to hear challenges to federal statutes, es- spite these limitations, our work makes important substan-
pecially “landmark” statutes, when the Court is ideologically tive and methodological contributions to understanding the
constrained by Congress (Harvey and Friedman 2009). They nature of judicial review.
also find that the justices are less likely to invalidate federal We also aim to improve Harvey and Friedman’s analysis
statutes when they are constrained by Congress (Harvey and by examining a longer time period and focusing on Con-
Friedman 2006). This statute-centered (rather than case- gress’s most important legislative enactments. Our attention
centered) approach offers a solution to the selection bias to important laws offers four advantages. First, it aligns with
problem. Dahl’s emphasis on “legislation that could reasonably be
Unfortunately, by examining every federal statute, Har- regarded as important from the point of view of the law-
vey and Friedman encounter some notable difficulties. First, making majority” (1957, 287). Second, it allows us to dis-
in an effort to manage the scope of the data, the authors regard the bulk of federal statutes that are not significant
limit their study to a relatively brief time period. Second, enough to warrant the Court’s attention and concentrate on
because they examine so many statutes (many of which have laws that are of most interest to elected officials, scholars,
only minor policy implications), patterns in the exercise of and the public. Third, because these laws are invalidated at
judicial review are easily obscured amid the volume of leg- a relatively high rate, we are able to examine greater varia-
islative activity. For example, Harvey and Friedman find that tion with fewer observations. Finally, the Court may some-

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 Volume 77 Number 3 July 2015 / 823

times make “decisions that are deemed unworthy of leg- portant” statutes that are supported by those who collec-
islative attention . . . that other political actors would be tively hold the lawmaking power (Dahl 1957, 287).
willing, even eager, to support”; accordingly, the invalida- Although Dahl mentioned only the president and con-
tion of unimportant statutes may promote a “division of gressional majorities, the legislative process obviously in-
labor” between Congress and the Court, freeing elected of- cludes additional complexities. To account for these com-
ficials to handle issues that win them “political plaudits” plexities, we employ Krehbiel’s (1998) theory of pivotal
(Whittington 2007, 121–24). We avoid this complication by politics. In pivot models, the passage of legislation depends
focusing our analysis on the Court’s treatment of important on support from several actors. The pivotal actor is the ac-
federal statutes. tor least likely to support the legislation whose support
We therefore compile a data set of every important (combined with the support of all actors with higher like-
public law enacted from 1949 to 2008.5 These data include lihood of support) would guarantee passage of the legisla-
every public law identified as “important” by David May- tion. In a single-chamber legislature operating in a unidi-
hew’s “Sweep 1” process (2005). Mayhew codes “important” mensional policy space with majority voting and no agenda
laws as those that were mentioned in the end-of-session control, the pivotal actor is the median member of the
wrap-up stories in the New York Times and the Washington chamber. Institutional structures that create additional veto
Post. We then identify which of these statutes were subject points add more pivots. For example, bicameralism, the
to a constitutional challenge before the Supreme Court and presidential veto, the filibuster, and political parties all com-
which of those challenged were invalidated. This procedure plicate the model. Yet the basic intuition is straightforward:
identifies 260 important public laws that were challenged the enactment of legislation is controlled by the actor least
122 times and invalidated 51 times.6 likely to support the legislation whose support would guar-
antee passage.
Operationalizing majority support Evaluating judicial majoritarianism does not require
Our goal is to evaluate whether judicial review promotes specification of a particular pivot model. We therefore test
majority interests and, if so, when and why. A critical step three possible formulations: (i) a Floor Median Model, in
in this analysis is to clarify exactly who constitutes the which potential pivotal actors include the House and Sen-
“majority.” Because we aim to inform the enduring debate ate chamber medians, the president, and the veto-override
over the nature of judicial review, we adopt Dahl’s con- players; (ii) a Senate Filibuster Model, which adds filibus-
ception of a “lawmaking majority” as “a majority of those ter players as potentially pivotal actors; and (iii) a Party
voting in the House and Senate, together with the presi- Gatekeeping Model, which adds the median member of the
dent” (1957, 284). This understanding of the majority is majority party in both chambers. The critical theoretical
similar to Bickel’s notion of “the representatives of the ac- question for this analysis is not which model accurately
tual people of the here and now” (1986, 17). Whereas Dahl describes the legislative process but rather which model
argued that the Court was unlikely to block a “deter- reflects a normatively relevant conception of a “lawmak-
mined and persistent lawmaking majority on a major pol- ing majority.” However, as the results below indicate, our
icy” (1957, 286), Bickel believed the invalidation of federal substantive inferences do not rely on a particular form of
laws inherently “thwarts the will” of these lawmakers (1986, the pivot model.
17). Accordingly, the critical empirical debate between Dahl We employ the methodology developed by Segal et al.
and Bickel is whether the Court tends to invalidate “im- (2011) and use Poole and Rosenthal’s (1997) Common Space
scores to estimate current support for public laws among
5. We have explored the possibility that interbranch relations vary various critical officials. The first step in this process is to
over time as the New Deal Court transitions to a more conservative Court. run logistic regressions on the original roll call votes using
There is some evidence that majoritarian pressures are relatively weak in
the then-member of Congress’s Common Space score to
the transitional period and relatively strong when the Court has a clearer
political identity. This finding may suggest a route for future research.
predict yea votes. Next, we use the coefficients from these
6. Mayhew’s Sweep 1 identifies 295 laws; however, 35 of these laws equations along with each current official’s Common Space
were enacted by voice votes, which makes it impossible to measure sup- score to estimate the predicted probability of the official sup-
port for the law by current officials. Accordingly, our analysis excludes porting the law at the time of potential review. Using this
these 35 laws, which were challenged seven times and invalidated twice. In
process, we are able to estimate the predicted probability of
comparison, Harvey and Friedman (2006, 2009) examine more than 3,700
public laws, 42 of which were reviewed by the Court and 22 of which were the pivotal actor in the legislative process supporting the
invalidated. law. We refer to the resulting estimates as majority support.

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824 / Judicial Majoritarianism Matthew E. K. Hall and Joseph Daniel Ura

We employ this measure in all three pivot models to test the and Senate members, the Court is unconstrained, so we
empirical debate between Bickel and Dahl: that is, does the code ideological constraint as 0. If the median justice falls
Court tend to invalidate important statutes with majority outside of this interval, we code ideological constraint as
support? the absolute difference between the Court and the nearer
chamber median (see Segal et al. 2011). If ideological di-
Operationalizing shared preferences vergence drives judicial majoritarianism, then ideological
Next, in order to evaluate whether judicial majoritarianism constraint should moderate the effect of majority support
is motivated by shared preferences between justices and on judicial review: the association between majority sup-
lawmakers, we utilize the same procedure described above port and judicial review should be strongest when the
to estimate the justices’ support for individual public laws. ideological constraint variable is high.
We use Judicial Common Space scores (Epstein, Knight,
and Martin 2007) and the original roll call data to estimate ANALYSIS
the predicted probability of the median justice on the Court We conduct three analyses to address our empirical ques-
supporting the law.7 We then measure the absolute dif- tions. We begin by providing a description of our modeling
ference between majority support and Court support. We strategy and a preview of our findings. We then present
subtract that value from 1 to estimate shared preferences our analyses of (i) whether judicial review is majoritarian;
between the median justice and pivotal lawmaker. Higher (ii) whether a majoritarian pattern emerges at the cert stage,
values of shared preferences indicate that the lawmaking the merit stage, or both; and (iii) which mechanisms drive
majority and the Court have similar preferences with regard judicial majoritarianism.
to a specific public law (either shared support or shared First, we conduct a duration analysis to test the rela-
opposition). We use this measure to test Dahl’s theory that tionship between lawmakers’ support for important public
judicial majoritarianism is driven by shared preferences be- laws and the invalidation of those laws by the Supreme
tween justices and lawmakers. If Dahl was correct, shared Court. The dependent variable in this model is the invali-
preferences should moderate the effect of majority support dation (or partial invalidation) of the statute by the Court;
on judicial review: the association between majority support that is, in any given year a law might be struck down (“fail”)
and judicial review should be strongest when the shared or not (“survive”). The key independent variable is the
preferences variable is high. predicted support of a pivotal voter in Congress (majority
support), which we estimate using the three pivotal voter
Operationalizing ideological constraint models described above. Also, because duration data are
Finally, the ideological constraint theory suggests that ju- equivalent to binary time-series cross-sectional data, we fol-
dicial majoritarianism is driven by ideological divergence low the advice of Carter and Sigorino (2010) and analyze the
between the Court and Congress.8 To measure ideological data using a logistic regression with cubic polynomial time
divergence, we employ Bailey and Maltzman (2011) ideal variables to account for potential duration dependence.10
point estimates for the median justice and the median mem- Our time variable is the number of years since a statute’s
bers of the House and the Senate.9 When the median enactment or last invalidation (years without invalidation).
justice’s ideal point falls between that of the median House This approach is functionally equivalent to a traditional
duration analysis and offers clearer interpretation.11 We find
that majority support is negatively associated with the in-
validation of important laws: as the predicted probability of
7. We assume that the median justice is the pivotal actor at both the
merits and the cert stages. Although only four justices must agree to grant majority support increases, the probability of the Court in-
cert, Lax (2003) demonstrates that the primary effect of the Rule of Four is validating the law decreases. This result indicates that the
to lower the threshold for the magnitude of utility gains that must be Court tends to promote majority interests.
realized by the median justice before the Court grants cert. Accordingly,
even under the Rule of Four, the probability of the Court hearing a
challenge should be influenced by the median justice’s preferences.
8. Our results are also robust to controlling for the ideological dis- 10. A likelihood ratio test of the Floor Median Model in table 1 vs. a
tance between the median justice and the president; however, we find no specification without the cubic polynomials yields a x2 statistic of 43.05;
effect of presidential constraint. therefore, we can reject the null hypothesis of duration independence,
9. Bailey and Maltzman (2011) scores use bridging actors and ob- indicating that the cubic polynomials should be included in the model.
servations, and, therefore, may provide more reliable estimates of relative 11. A Cox Proportional Hazard Model, a logit model with temporal
ideological positions across institutions. Our results are also robust to dummies, and a logit model with cubic splines (Beck, Katz, and Tucker
measuring ideological divergence with Judicial Common Space scores. 1998) all yield substantively indistinguishable results.

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 Volume 77 Number 3 July 2015 / 825

Second, we evaluate when in the Supreme Court’s it is ideologically distant from Congress, regardless of its own
decision-making process this majoritarian pattern emerges. shared preferences with lawmakers.
To do so, we utilize a two-stage Heckman probit model. The
selection variable in the first stage of the model is the Court’s Judicial majoritarianism
decision to hear a challenge to an important public law. The Table 1 reports the results of the first analysis, which as-
dependent variable in the second stage is the Court’s de- sesses the relationship between lawmaker preferences and
cision to invalidate (or partially invalidate) the statute. We the invalidation of important federal laws. The table reports
include cubic polynomials of years without invalidation in three models estimated under different assumptions about
the first stage to account for duration dependence. We in- the legislative process (the Floor Median Model, the Senate
clude majority support in both stages to test when the Court’s Filibuster Model, and the Party Gatekeeping Model). All
decisions tend to promote majority interests. We find that three models indicate that greater support for an important
the majoritarian pattern is driven by the Court’s decisions at law by the current pivotal legislator is strongly associated
the cert stage. Predicted support for a law in Congress is with a decreased probability of the Court invalidating the
negatively associated with the Court hearing a challenge to law.
it: the greater the support by lawmakers, the less likely the Figure 1 illustrates the association between majority sup-
Court is to hear a challenge to that law in the first place. port and the invalidation of important public laws based
Finally, we evaluate competing explanations for the ma- on the Floor Median Model in table 1. Figure 1a reports
joritarian pattern that emerges in the cert stage. In partic- the predicted probability of a law being invalidated plotted
ular, we model the effect of shared preferences and ideo- against the number of years since the law was enacted or
logical constraint in shaping majoritarian judicial review. last invalidated. The figure compares the predicted proba-
To do so, we employ a logistic regression of the Court’s bility of invalidation for laws with high majority support
decision to hear a challenge to an important public law. We (one standard deviation above the mean) and laws with low
include majority support, shared preferences, ideological majority support (one standard deviation below the mean).
constraint, and cubic polynomials of years without invali- As shown in the figure, the probability of invalidation de-
dation as predictors. We also interact majority support with clines sharply over time. More importantly, support from
both shared preferences and ideological constraint in order sitting elected officials is strongly associated with the in-
to identify whether these mechanisms moderate the rela- validation of important public laws: the probability of a law
tionship between majority support and judicial review. We with high majority support being struck down the year after
find that the Court only promotes majority interests when its enactment is approximately .017; however, the proba-

Table 1. Testing Judicial Majoritarianism

Floor Median Model Senate Filibuster Model Party Gatekeeping Model

Majority support 21.50* 21.14* 21.32*

(.51) (.50) (.49)
Years without invalidation 2.19* 2.17* 2.17*
(.09) (.09) (.09)
Years without invalidation2 .01 .01 .01
(.01) (.01) (.01)
Years without invalidation3 2.00 2.00 2.00
(.00) (.00) (.00)
Constant 22.59* 22.97* 22.88*
(.51) (.45) (.43)
Log-pseudolikelihood 2272.52 2273.74 2272.76
Wald x2 31.47 32.19 32.45
Prob 1 x2 .00 .00 .00

Note. Np 7,475. Table reports logistic regression models of the US Supreme Court invalidating important federal statutes with
three different versions of majority support. Robust standard errors are in parentheses.
* p ! .05; two-tailed test.

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826 / Judicial Majoritarianism Matthew E. K. Hall and Joseph Daniel Ura

average predicted probability of invalidation is about two-

thirds of one percent, this effect is substantial.
These results support Dahl’s thesis: the Court tends
to promote the interests of the lawmaking majority by in-
validating statutes that enjoy less support among current
elected officials. It is important not to overstate this find-
ing. The Court sometimes invalidates laws with substantial
congressional support; in other words, judicial review is oc-
casionally countermajoritarian. Nonetheless, the Supreme
Court’s invalidation of important federal laws is principally
majoritarian.

Judicial majoritarianism at the cert

and merits stages
The first analysis demonstrates that the Court is less likely
to invalidate laws that enjoy greater support from current
lawmakers; however, it remains to be seen when in the
Court’s decision-making process this pattern emerges. We
therefore assess the relationship between lawmaker prefer-
ences and the Court’s decisions at both the cert and merits
stages. Table 2 presents the results of our two-stage Heck-
man probit analysis.
The data indicate that judicial majoritarianism is driven
by the Court’s decisions at the agenda-setting stage. The
Court is significantly less likely to hear challenges to im-
portant laws that enjoy greater support from current law-
makers; however, after the Court agrees to hear a challenge,
there is no majoritarian effect on the decision to invalidate
the law. Majority support is not significantly associated
Figure 1. Judicial majoritarianism over time: a, the predicted probability of
the Supreme Court invalidating an important public law as the time since
with the Court’s decisions at the merits stage in any of the
enactment or previous invalidation increases when majority support is one models.
standard deviation above and below the mean; b, the conditional marginal Figure 2 illustrates the magnitude of the association be-
effects of a one standard deviation increase in majority support on the tween majority support and Supreme Court agenda setting.
probability of the Supreme Court invalidating an important public law as the
The x-axis indicates majority support based on the Floor
time since enactment or previous invalidation increases. Dotted lines in-
dicate 95% confidence intervals. Predicted probabilities and marginal ef- Median Model. The y-axis reports the predicted probability
fects are based on the Floor Median Model in table 1 with majority support of the Court granting cert in a case challenging the con-
set to the mean. stitutionality of an important public law the year after its
enactment or previous invalidation. As shown in the figure,
bility of invalidation for a law with low majority support the predicted probability of the Court hearing a challenge
more than doubles to .035. drops from .09 to .03 as majority support increases from its
Figure 1b reports the conditional marginal effect of a minimum to its maximum.
one standard deviation increase in majority support on the
predicted probability of invalidation across time. As illus- The foundations of judicial majoritarianism
trated in the figure, the association between majority sup- We have established that the Supreme Court is less likely
port and the invalidation of important laws is statistically to invalidate important public laws with greater majority
significant in the first quarter century after a law is enacted support and that this pattern arises because the Court is
or last invalidated. The effect is strongest the year after less likely to hear cases challenging such laws. Next, we
enactment or invalidation, when a standard increase in ma- evaluate which factors drive this majoritarian pattern in the
jority support is associated with a one percentage point de- Court’s agenda setting, testing two mechanisms that might
cline in the probability of invalidation. Considering that the encourage judicial majoritariansim: shared preferences be-

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 Volume 77 Number 3 July 2015 / 827

Table 2. Judicial Majoritarianism at the Cert and Merits Stages

Floor Median Model Senate Filibuster Model Party Gatekeeping Model

Stage 1: Challenges to important federal statutes:

Majority support 2.51* 2.42* 2.46*
(.14) (.14) (.13)
Years without invalidation 2.07* 2.07* 2.07*
(.02) (.02) (.02)
Years without invalidation2 .00 .00 .00
(.00) (.00) (.00)
Years without invalidation3 2.00 2.00 2.00
(.00) (.00) (.00)
Constant 21.27* 21.38* 21.36*
(.14) (.13) (.12)
Stage 2: Invalidations of important federal statutes:
Majority support 2.01 .08 .03
(.53) (.51) (.49)
Constant .81 .77 .78
(.88) (.92) (.90)
Log-pseudolikelihood 2628.30 2629.81 2628.44
Wald x2 .00 .03 .00
Prob 1 x2 .98 .87 .96

Note. N p 7,475. Table reports two-stage Heckman probit models of the US Supreme Court deciding to hear challenges to important federal statutes and
subsequently invalidating those statues with three different versions of majority support. Robust standard errors are in parentheses.
* p ! .05; two-tailed test.

tween justices and lawmakers and the justices’ concern for the probability of the Supreme Court hearing a challenge
ideological constraint. To do so, we run a logistic regres- to an important public law with 95% confidence intervals.
sion of the Court hearing a challenge to an important pub- Marginal effects are calculated at different levels of shared
lic law on the time variables and a three-way interaction preferences and ideological constraint for the year after a
between majority support, shared preferences, and ideo-
logical constraint.12 If judicial majoritarianism is driven by
shared preferences or ideological constraint, we expect the
effect of majority support to be moderated by these vari-
ables.
The results of a three-way interaction are difficult to in-
terpret, often conveying little information about the mag-
nitude of the relationships of interest (Brambor, Clark, and
Golder 2006, 74). Accordingly, we present predicted prob-
abilities and marginal effects in order to illuminate the in-
teractions between majority support, shared preferences,
and ideological constraint.13
Figure 3 illustrates the conditional marginal effect of
a one standard deviation increase in majority support on

Figure 2. Majoritarian agenda setting: figure presents the predicted prob-

12. The shared preferences and ideological constraint variables are ability of the Supreme Court hearing a challenge to an important public
weakly correlated (r p .07). law the year after its enactment or previous invalidation as majority sup-
13. Marginal effects in fig. 3 and predicted probabilities in fig. 4 are port increases from one standard deviation below the mean to one stan-
based on the Floor Median Model. Marginal effects and predicted prob- dard deviation above the mean. Dotted lines indicate 95% confidence in-
abilities based on the Senate Filibuster and Party Gatekeeping Models are tervals. Predicted probabilities are based on the Floor Median Model in
substantively indistinguishable. table 2.

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828 / Judicial Majoritarianism Matthew E. K. Hall and Joseph Daniel Ura

is low, and it declines as majority support increases. Once

again, shared preferences are not associated with the ma-
joritarian effect. Therefore, the data suggest that ideological
constraint drives judicial majoritarianism: greater majority
support for an important federal statute reduces the law’s
prospects of being challenged only when the Court is ideo-
logically distant from Congress.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

We began by revisiting the classic tension between demo-
cratic values and the institution of judicial review in Amer-
ican politics. Many contemporary constitutional theorists
and political scientists express grave concern about the
countermajoritarian difficulty that arises when “the Su-
Figure 3. Marginal effects of majority support by shared preferences and
preme Court declares unconstitutional a legislative act” and
ideological constraint: figure presents the conditional marginal effects of a
one standard deviation increase in majority support on the probability of thereby “thwarts the will of the representatives of the ac-
the Supreme Court hearing a challenge to an important public law the year tual people of the here and now” (Bickel 1986, 17). Yet
after its enactment or previous invalidation with 95% confidence intervals. others argue that the Supreme Court is part of a national
Marginal effects are based on the Floor Median Model.
governing “alliance” and that its power of judicial review is
principally exercised in service of majority interests (Dahl
1957, 293). An enormous body of normative, positive, and
law’s enactment or previous invalidation. “‘High” and “low” empirical scholarship engages these contrasting views. Here
shared preferences and ideological constraint indicate val- we combine recent methodological advances in the study
ues one standard deviation above and below the mean, re- of judicial review to adjudicate between these contrasting
spectively. When ideological constraint is high, greater ma- views and provide new insights into this critical puzzle in
jority support is strongly associated with the Court hearing the study of American constitutionalism.
fewer challenges; however, when constraint is low, major- Our analysis proceeds from three questions: (i) Is the
ity support is not significantly associated with the Court Supreme Court’s exercise of judicial review best character-
hearing a challenge. Furthermore, the difference between ize as majoritarian or countermajoritarian? If judicial review
these marginal effects is statistically significant (p p .03, is typically majoritarian, (ii) when in the Court’s decision-
one-tailed test). These findings indicate that the Court only making process does this pattern emerge, and (iii) which po-
tends to promote majority interests when it is ideologically litical and institutional mechanisms drive judicial majoritar-
distant from Congress. In contrast, the marginal effect of ianism? To answer these questions, we examine the Court’s
majority support is statistically indistinguishable for high treatment of every important federal statute enacted from
and low levels of shared preferences (p p .33, one-tailed 1949 to 2008 at both the certiorari and merits stages. Al-
test). Accordingly, we find no evidence that judicial ma- though this approach is not without limitations, our results
joritarianism is driven by shared preferences between law- provide strong evidence to resolve the empirical dispute be-
makers and justices with regard to specific public laws. tween Bickel and Dahl.
Figure 4 reports the predicted probability of the Court The data provide a clear answer to our first question: the
hearing a challenge to an important public law as majority US Supreme Court tends to exercise judicial review con-
support increases from its minimum to its maximum with sistently with the preferences of lawmaking majorities. To
95% confidence intervals. Predicted probabilities are cal- be sure, we observe instances of the Court invalidating
culated at varying levels of shared preferences and ideo- laws that enjoy the support of contemporary majorities. Yet
logical constraint for the year after a law’s enactment or important laws that are opposed by pivotal lawmakers are
previous invalidation. Under low constraint, the predicted more likely to be invalidated than laws that continue to
probability of the Court hearing a challenge to an impor- enjoy support from these lawmakers. We therefore reject
tant law remains relatively low across different levels of Bickel’s (1986) central premise that judicial review is nec-
majority support, regardless of shared preferences. Under essarily a countermajoritarian institution. We also reject
high constraint, the predicted probability of the Court hear- the weaker claim that judicial review as it is practiced by the
ing a challenge is relatively high when majority support US Supreme Court is principally countermajoritarian. In-

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 Volume 77 Number 3 July 2015 / 829

Figure 4. The foundations of majoritarian agenda setting: figures present the predicted probability of the Supreme Court hearing a challenge to an important
public law the year after its enactment or previous invalidation as majority support increases from two standard deviations below the mean to the maximum.
Dotted lines indicate 95% confidence intervals. Predicted probabilities are based on the Floor Median Model.

stead, we find convincing evidence that majoritarianism jority interests is concentrated in the agenda setting stage.
generally animates judicial review in the United States. The greater the support a law enjoys among current law-
This first result suggests that the emphasis on the counter- makers, the less likely the Court is to hear a challenge to the
majoritarian difficulty as a problem in modern constitu- law and, as a result, the more likely the law is to “survive.”
tional theory and as a starting point for studies of judicial This result provides a new and important insight into the
behavior is misplaced. Judicial countermajoritarianism ex- relationship between the Supreme Court and Congress. Ju-
ists, and it remains normatively problematic. Yet scholars dicial majoritarianism emerges because the Court is un-
have spent comparatively little time investigating other as- likely to hear challenges to federal statutes that enjoy ma-
pects of the interaction between judicial power and demo- jority support among lawmakers.
cratic politics, creating a startlingly incomplete picture of Moreover, this second result also indicates that the
whether judicial review is “worth it” (Friedman 2002, 257). certiorari process presents a particularly fruitful opportu-
Our findings therefore emphasize the importance of con- nity for gaining new insights into judicial decision making
tinued efforts to evaluate the social value of judicial review and the strategic behavior of those who interact with con-
and, in particular, to take up research that considers vari- stitutional courts. Although we style our work as an anal-
ous “majoritarian diffiult[ies]” that may arise from judicial ysis of the Supreme Court’s certiorari decisions, we are
review principally exercised in service of majority interests deeply conscious that decisions to hear challenges to laws
(Dorf 2010). or to avoid these cases is merely the final step in a lengthy
Our two-stage analysis of the Supreme Court’s decisions process that unfolds, in part, as a response to other actors’
at the cert and merits stages answers our second question. strategic expectations about the Court’s propensity to hear
The data show that the Court’s tendency to promote ma- particular cases and rule in particular ways. It is highly

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830 / Judicial Majoritarianism Matthew E. K. Hall and Joseph Daniel Ura

likely that patterns in judicial behavior during the certiorari United States is broadly consistent with this majoritarian
process, including those we identify, emerge as the result of perspective.
interactions among the Supreme Court, lower courts, and
(potential) litigants. The prospect of strategic litigant be- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
havior is especially important in light of research that fails We gratefully acknowledge Cornell Clayton and Kevin
to find evidence of external influence on the justices’ cert McGuire for their thoughtful and constructive advice in the
votes (Owens 2010). Identifying which choices made by development of this project.
lower courts and litigants lead the Court to avoid con-
frontations with Congress is beyond the scope of the pres- REFERENCES
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