the Shadow Court: Rescuing Democracy from Supreme Court

“As more and more Americans give up on the Supreme Court, Julie Suk—a generational leader in studying constitutional experiences across the globe—proposes not to fix our apex judicial institution so much as to invent another one. We need, she argues, an advisory legal interpreter that will better serve democracy as its first bulwark. Arresting, clear, and original, The Shadow Court is an indispensable contribution.”—Samuel Moyn, Kent Professor of Law and History, Yale University "Suk's innovative proposal to reinvigorate Congress's constitutional responsibilities is a must-read for Court reformers, and indeed for anyone who cares about the future of our constitutional democracy. This is fresh, vital thinking from one of the nation's foremost experts in global constitutional law."—Jamal Greene, author of How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights Is Tearing America Apart “The Shadow Court offers a truly original and brilliantly creative solution to the ills that plague American democracy. Suk has made a bold and important contribution to Americans' conversations about Court reform and given us a fascinating work of comparative constitutionalism at the same time. By examining the experiences of constitutional democracies around the world, this book is able to offer a wealth of new ideas and pathways for reform. It is an essential read for anyone concerned about the fate of our constitutional system.”—Emily Zackin, coauthor of The Political Development of American Debt Relief " The Shadow Court is an essential contribution to ongoing US debates about law, democracy, and the courts. By drawing creatively from the experiences of countries around the world, Suk offers both an incisive analysis of constitutional breakdown and a deeply innovative reform pathway out of the current democratic crisis. A vital invitation to expand our imaginative horizon, this is an urgent and timely book that should be read widely by scholars, citizens, and policymakers alike."—Aziz Rana, author of The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them An innovative solution to the antidemocratic overreach of the Supreme Court, drawing on lessons from constitutional democracies around the world. For the foreseeable future, America is stuck with a Supreme Court compromised by a crisis of legitimacy. Beyond expanding presidential power, dismantling voting rights, and protecting other forms of antidemocratic government, the Court continues to usurp lawmaking power that should belong to the people and their elected representatives in a constitutional democracy. Julie C. Suk offers a novel solution to the problems plaguing the Supreme Court: a Shadow Court. All over the world, shadow governments act as watchdogs for representative democracies, and constitutional courts prevent slides into authoritarianism. Suk shows how Congress can build on these modern models and break the Supreme Court's monopoly on constitutional interpretation by creating a Shadow Court that would decide contested constitutional questions in the abstract before the Supreme Court could rule on them in a concrete case. Ambitious but pragmatic, The Shadow Court offers a hopeful and enduring solution for rescuing democracy in the United States.

Pagina's: 312, Hardcover, University of California Press