Source: https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-political-theory-of-an-independent-judiciary
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 04:26:45+00:00

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Many of the nation’s most influential constitutional law scholars have argued recently that judicial review should be sharply limited or eliminated altogether. The list includes such notable thinkers as Larry D. Kramer, Cass R. Sunstein, William M. Treanor, and Mark V. Tushnet.
Mary Sarah Bilder’s article is a powerful corrective to this mounting opposition to the doctrine made famous by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison . Professor Bilder concludes that judicial review is an integral part of the American constitutional order with deep historical roots. I agree. However, Professor Bilder and I disagree on the nature of those roots. She traces the origins of judicial review to corporate law, whereas I locate them in political theory.
Professor Bilder marshals considerable historical evidence in support of her provocative thesis that “judicial review was the continuation of a longstanding English practice of constraining corporate ordinances by requiring that they not be repugnant to the laws of the nation.” Unfortunately, she misses the mark when she claims that judicial review was a shifting “cultural practice” rather than a new “intellectual doctrine.” After all, the Founders of the American regime were steeped in the history of ideas, and the Constitution they created expressed their commitment to the power of ideas.
John Adams was the American Founding’s most sophisticated political theorist and when he modified Montesquieu’s conception of the separation of powers by developing what can be fairly termed the political architecture of an independent judiciary, he articulated an idea that helped make judicial review possible. In fact, Adams’s contribution to political theory is arguably as significant as that of the French baron whose work inspired him and the other American Founders.
It is well known that Montesquieu’s seminal contribution to the history of ideas is that political power should be divided among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government so as to ensure the people’s liberty. What is largely overlooked, however, is that Montesquieu’s characterization of the judicial power differs dramatically from the American view: the preferred scheme of checks and balances Montesquieu describes in The Spirit of the Laws is not the three famous powers but the established English scheme of king, lords, and commons. “Among the three powers of which we have spoken,” he writes, “that of judging is in some fashion, null.” He maintains that “only two” powers truly matter—the legislative and the executive—and that the “part of the legislative body composed of the nobles is quite appropriate” for checking legislative abuse.
It would be left to John Adams to suggest that judges, and not simply temporary juries, need to be independent from the executive and legislative branches of government. Adams had been writing about the need for an independent judiciary since at least January and February of 1773, when he engaged in a series of exchanges on the matter in the Boston press with William Brattle. Brattle, a Tory, insisted that the proposed payment of judicial salaries by the Crown should not concern the people of Massachusetts Bay, as the judges of the colony’s superior court, like their brethren in England, enjoyed life tenure so long as they behaved well. Adams, after conducting an extensive historical review of the subject, countered that Brattle was wrong to claim that judges in England, let alone in America, held their offices during good behavior. Consequently, the proposed control by the Crown over judicial salaries was perceived by Adams as an additional threat to the independence of the Massachusetts judiciary.
The dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals of the people, and every blessing of society depend so much upon an upright and skillful administration of justice, that the judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, and independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, as both should be checks upon that.
Judicialreview fits into the political theory of an independent judiciary in at least two ways. First, judicial review is a core component of the Constitution’s system of checks and balances, a system in which each branch of the federal government is endowed with, in the words of The Federalist No. 48, “a constitutional control over the others.” The President has, among other checks, a veto over congressional bills and the power to nominate federal judges. Congress has, among other checks, the power to override presidential vetoes and to control the size and jurisdiction of the federal courts, as well as the power to impeach all federal officials. Without the power of judicial review, what check—what “constitutional control”—would the federal judiciary have on the President or Congress? The answer is none. As a consequence, judicial review is an inevitable component of the Constitution’s commitment to checks and balances.
Judicial review also fits into the political theory of an independent judiciary in another, equally straightforward, fashion: judicial review is the ultimate expression of judicial independence, because without judicial independence no court could safely void an act of a coordinate political branch. Bluntly stated, the risk to a judge who exercises judicial review when he or she is not independent of the executive and the legislature is either removal from the bench or a reduction in salary. John Adams knew this, and so did the Framers who met in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 when they wrote Adams’s theory of judicial independence into Article III of the Constitution.
What all of this means for Professor Bilder’s project is this: it suggests that she errs by emphasizing as much as she does what might be called the “vertical” origins of judicial review—the notion that there exists a hierarchy of laws, and that when a court finds an inferior law is repugnant to a superior law, the court ought to invalidate the inferior law. An investigation into the origins of judicial review that concludes that habituation to vertical review by the Privy Council and colonial judiciaries was sufficient to give rise to judicial review by the federal judiciary turns a blind eye to the Founders’ political theory—a political theory that suggests that the origins of judicial review are more accurately traced to the “horizontal” idea of separation of powers.
An examination of the origins of judicial review that takes political theory seriously reveals that the raison d’etre for judicial review is to protect individual rights from overreaching by the political process. The pre-Marbury state precedents that Professor Bilder discusses—Holmes v. Walton, Commonwealth v. Caton, Trevett v. Weeden, the Ten Pound Act Cases, and Bayard v. Singleton—make it clear beyond cavil how early American judges thought the doctrine should be exercised: to protect individual rights. Holmes v. Walton, Trevett v. Weeden, the Ten Pound Act Cases, and Bayard v. Singleton involved securing the individual right of trial by jury. Commonwealth v. Caton concerned the most sacred right of all: the right not to be executed without the benefit of appropriate structural safeguards.
Among all the advantages, which have arisen to mankind, from the study of letters, and the universal diffusion of knowledge, there is none of more importance, than the tendency they have had to produce discussions upon the respective rights of the sovereign and the subject; and, upon the powers which the different branches of government may exercise. For, by this means, tyranny has been sapped, the departments kept within their own spheres, the citizens protected, and general liberty promoted.
[I]f the whole legislature, an event to be deprecated, should attempt to overleap the bounds, prescribed to them by the people, I, in administering the public justice of the country, will meet the united powers, at my seat in this tribunal; and, pointing to the constitution, will say, to them, here is the limit of your authority; and, hither, shall you go, but no further.
Scott D. Gerber is an associate professor at Ohio Northern University College of Law and a senior research scholar in law and politics at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center. He is currently writing a book on The Origins of an Independent Judiciary: A Study in Early American Constitutional Development, 1606-1787 from which this Response draws. His debut legal thriller, The Law Clerk, is in press. His e-mail address is s-gerber@onu.edu.
Preferred Citation: Scott D. Gerber, The Political Theory of an Independent Judiciary, 116 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 223 (2007), http://yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-political-theory-of-an-independent-judiciary.
Essay: Mary Sarah Bilder, Why We Have Judicial Review, 116 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 215 (2007), http://thepocketpart.org/2007/01/09/bilder.html (adapted from Mary Sarah Bilder, The Corporate Origins of Judicial Review , 116 Yale L.J. 502 (2006)).
Response: William Michael Treanor, Original Understanding and the Whether, Why, and How of Judicial Review, 116 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 218 (2007), http://thepocketpart.org/2007/01/09/treanor.html.

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