Barry Friedman · September 2010 78 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1232 (2010) This is a Reply for a symposium by The George Washington Law Review regarding “The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Influences the Supreme Court and Shapes the Meaning of the Constitution.” It takes up the question of constitutional change, clarifying what... Read More

Richard Primus · September 2010 78 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1207 (2010) Barry Friedman’s new book The Will of the People attempts to dissolve constitutional law’s countermajoritarian difficulty by showing that, in practice, the Supreme Court does only what the public will tolerate. His account succeeds if “the countermajoritarian difficulty” refers to the threat that... Read More

William E. Forbath · September 2010 78 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1191 (2010) Barry Friedman has written a wonderful book. Brilliant in its narrative detail, The Will of the People ranks among the best one-volume histories of the Supreme Court in United States politics. It recounts two centuries of a complex saga in a way... Read More

Jenna Bednar · September 2010 78 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1178 (2010) For an institution designed to resolve disagreement, the United States Supreme Court is remarkably good at stirring the pot. Some look to the Court as the rampart that makes democracy’s airy construction possible; it is the essential resistance to majoritarian policy turned oppressive,... Read More

Philip Hamburger · September 2010 78 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1162 (2010) What is the role of judges in holding government acts unconstitutional? The conventional paradigm is “judicial review.” From this perspective, judges have a distinct power to review statutes and other government acts for their constitutionality. The historical evidence, however, reveals another paradigm, that... Read More

G. Edward White · September 2010 78 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1145 (2010) Philip Hamburger’s Law and Judicial Duty is a considerable achievement. This Essay later undertakes some criticism of it, but this should be understood as engagement with a provocative and substantial piece of work. Hamburger’s research in American archives has been dogged and... Read More

Mary Sarah Bilder · September 2010 78 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1129 (2010) Written as a comment on Philip Hamburger’s book Law and Judicial Duty, this Essay explains why the history of judicial review remains a difficult area for scholarship. American judicial tradition espoused that judges had an obligation to declare as void laws repugnant... Read More

Ann Althouse · September 2010 78 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1123 (2010) The delightful thing about Philip Hamburger’s Law and Judicial Duty is the acting out—in 600-plus pages—of the surprise that is ordinariness. We may think that it’s exciting to picture the heroic judge, Chief Justice John Marshall, creating judicial review in Marbury v. Madison.... Read More