Previous studies show that Supreme Court justices defer to congressional preferences by striking down fewer Acts of Congress to restore the judiciary’s institutional legitimacy following the introduction of court-curbing bills. This assumes the Supreme Court acts as a guardian of the entire judiciary, but prior work has not explicitly tested this. We create a theory of “guardian” behavior and test the likelihood that the Court engages in this behavior following the introduction of court-curbing bills. We find that the Supreme Court actively corrects lower court instances of judicial review, a stronger response than previously suggested.
