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.

“This is an indispensable book for any student of American political development. Through detailed, careful research, Stephen Engel convincingly shows that judicial power grew in tandem with politicians’ changing conceptions of the legitimacy of stable political opposition in the United States. In a major advance, Engel explains that politicians after the Civil War became more likely to harness judicial power in pursuit of their political purposes than to simply attack and undermine it. By placing the development of court-party relations at the center of his analysis, Engel shines the spotlight on how the interaction of separate institutional and ideational orders drives political change. In so doing, he reveals how judicial authority, while seemingly secure today, remains subject to political manipulation in the future.” – Daniel J. Galvin, Northwestern University, author of Presidential Party Building: Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush

• 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.