Abstract
Brown v. Board of Education marked the beginning of a long era in American politics in which courts, litigation and legal rights were associated with progressive causes. That association, however, is now eroding. The left’s discontent with the Supreme Court is well known, but less attention has been paid to liberal concerns about judicial policymaking – including some of the very mechanisms honed by liberals in the Brown era – that go well beyond the Court. The Brown era obscured a simple truth about lawsuits that the next few years are likely to clarify: They are much better at gumming things up than they are at making things work. Policymaking through litigation, though associated with liberals in the Brown era, in fact reflects a deep distrust of centralized governance. Given that it is conservatives, not liberals, who are more often interested in constraining government, this makes lawsuits ordinarily a more congenial policy tool for Republicans than Democrats. For many elements of the Democratic agenda of the next few years, litigation is likely to prove a clumsy tool, more effective in the hands of opponents than proponents.
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© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- The Forum: Spring 2024 Issue
- Articles
- Affluence and the Demand-side for Policy Improvements: Exploring Elite Beliefs About Vulnerability to Societal Problems
- The Post-Brown Era in Judicial Policymaking
- Blame, Policy Feedback, and the Politics of Student Debt Relief Policy
- The Nationalized Politics of Police Reform
- Inside the “Administrative State”: The Enigmatic Office for Civil Rights
- How Ideological Diversity Moderates Republican Support for Voter Suppression Measures: The Cases of Georgia and Alabama
- Ten Years Later: How Water Crises in Flint and Detroit Transformed the Politics of U.S. Water Policy
- Climate Change Policy Development: A Multiple Streams Analysis of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022
- Book Review
- Steven Rogers: Accountability in State Legislatures
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- The Forum: Spring 2024 Issue
- Articles
- Affluence and the Demand-side for Policy Improvements: Exploring Elite Beliefs About Vulnerability to Societal Problems
- The Post-Brown Era in Judicial Policymaking
- Blame, Policy Feedback, and the Politics of Student Debt Relief Policy
- The Nationalized Politics of Police Reform
- Inside the “Administrative State”: The Enigmatic Office for Civil Rights
- How Ideological Diversity Moderates Republican Support for Voter Suppression Measures: The Cases of Georgia and Alabama
- Ten Years Later: How Water Crises in Flint and Detroit Transformed the Politics of U.S. Water Policy
- Climate Change Policy Development: A Multiple Streams Analysis of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022
- Book Review
- Steven Rogers: Accountability in State Legislatures