Judicial Guardians: Court-Curbing Bills, the Supreme Court, and Judicial Review

Abstract

Abstract 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.