That Eminent Tribunal: Judicial Supremacy and the Constitution

Extract

That Eminent Tribunal: Judicial Supremacy and the Constitution. Edited by Christopher Wolfe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 256 p. $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

“Constitutional law professors have been very upset lately with the U.S. Supreme Court” (p. 181). So begins Keith E. Whittington's contribution to this collection of 11 essays on the subject of, in the words of the subtitle, “judicial supremacy and the Constitution.” Many in the unhappy chorus mentioned by Whittington are mainstream legal academicians who decry the conservative judicial activism sometimes practiced by the Rehnquist Court; they long for a robust activism in defense of liberal political values that characterized Warren and some Burger Era rulings. But the contributors to this book are not members of that chorus. Instead, most question or condemn the liberal activism preferred by the legal mainstream, while a few reject both styles of activism and hanker for a modest judicial role characterized by editor Christopher Wolfe as “traditional judicial review” (p. 202).