Jonathan R. Siegel

Professor of Law

George Washington University

97 Iowa L. Rev. 1147 (2012)

The "popular constitutionalism" movement has revived the debate over judicial review. Popular constitutionalists have attacked judicial review as being illegitimate in a democracy or inconsistent with original intent, and they have argued that the Constitution should be enforced through popular, majoritarian means, such as elections and legislative agitation. This Article shows in response that the judicial process has institutional characteristics that make judicial review the superior method of constitutional enforcement. Prior literature has focused on just one such institutional characteristic: the political insulation of judges. This Article, by contrast, shows that the case for judicial review rests on a whole range of institutional distinctions among the judicial, electoral, and legislative processes. Most important among these distinctions are that the judicial process is focused (it resolves issues discretely, without entangling them with other issues), whereas the electoral process is unfocused; and the judicial process is mandatory (a complainant can invoke it as of right), whereas the legislative process is discretionary. The full range of its distinctive institutional characteristics, not just the political insulation of judges, normatively justifies judicial review.