Why Does the Supreme Court Invalidate Federal Statutes?
In a 2007 article in the American Political Science Review, I examined every federal statute struck down by the Supreme Court from 1981 through 2006. For each statute, I compared the legislative coalition that had enacted it with the judicial coalition that struck it down. When a Republican judicial coalition invalidates a Democratic statute, the Courts decision is consistent with a partisan account of judicial decision-making. Likewise, when a conservative judicial coalition invalidates a liberal statute, the decision is explicable on policy grounds. But when an ideologically mixed coalition invalidates a bipartisan statute, the decision may have reflected an institutional divide between judges and legislators rather than (or in addition to) a partisan or policy conflict. Perhaps surprisingly, I found more cases consistent with this last explanation than either of the others, as indicated in the following table.
