American Politicians Confront the Court

Stephen M. Engel is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. He holds a PhD in political science from Yale University as well as an MA in social thought from New York University and a BA in interdisciplinary social science from Wesleyan University. In 2007–08, he held a research fellowship at the American Bar Foundation where he conducted research on anti-Court activism in the United States. He is the author of The Unfinished Revolution: Social Movement Theory and the Gay and Lesbian Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2001). He has also published in Studies in American Political Development and Law and Social Inquiry.

1. Introduction: had Americans 'stopped understanding about the three branches'?; Part I. Political Development and Elected-Branch Relations with the Judiciary: 2. Beyond the countermajoritarian difficulty; 3. A developmental theory of political manipulation of judicial power; Part II. Hostility to Judicial Authority and the Political Idiom of Civic Republicanism: 4. In the cause of unified governance: undermining the court in an anti-party age; 5. Party against partisanship: single-party constitutionalism and the quest for regime unity; 6. 'As party exigencies require': republicanism, loyal opposition, and the emerging legitimacy of multiple constitutional visions; Part III. Harnessing Judicial Power and the Political Idiom of Liberal Pluralism: 7. Clashing progressive solutions to the problem of judicial authority; 8. In a polity fully-developed for harnessing (I): living constitutionalism and the policization of judicial appointment; 9. In a polity fully-developed for harnessing (II): a conservative insurgency and a self-styled majoritarian court responds; 10. Conclusion: on the 'return' of opposition illegitimacy and the prospects for new development.