Rebooting the Supreme Court
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Tulsa Law Review
Abstract
In 2023, the United States Supreme Court faced its greatest crisis of legitimacy in nearly a century, and one of the most severe in its history. Yet the Roberts Court majority has demonstrated little recognition of the legitimacy crisis or willingness to mitigate or ameliorate it. If the Court continues on its present trajectory, thereby exacerbating its diminishing legitimacy, both demands for reform and the extent of reforms demanded can be expected to continue to increase. Coincidentally, over the same recent timeframe, several prominent media franchises similarly have suffered precipitous collapses in their public standing. In both instances, the dearth of public trust has its origin in the divergence between the actions taken by those exercising the formal authority of interpretation and the normative and empirical consensus of the broader interpretive community. How should the wider interpretive community respond when the interpreters with power fall so far out of alignment with the community as a whole? This question has no simple answer in either context, but the juxtaposition with media franchise management suggests several important considerations in evaluating and responding to the Roberts Court’s legitimacy crisis. The difficult work must begin by carefully and accurately identifying the sources of the divergence so that an appropriately tailored and effective remedy can be implemented. As media franchises have discovered to their detriment, failure to get that first step right all but dooms subsequent remediation efforts, leaving the interpretive legitimacy crisis unresolved—if not worsened. Especially for those calling for a fundamental rebooting of the nature of judicial review in U.S. constitutional law, the comparison to media franchise management provides a cautionary tale about the likelihood of success when a reboot is attempted.
First Page
253
Last Page
300
Publication Date
Spring 2024
Recommended Citation
Benjamin J. Priester, Rebooting the Supreme Court, 59 TULSA L. REV. 253 (2024).