Upside Down Judicial Review Summary

In Corinne Barrett Lain, “Upside- Down Judicial Review”, she presents the idea of instead of upside down judicial review and how it has worked to transform the present courts of modern times. Lain argues her point of upside down Judicial review being used by the Supreme court in order to stray away from the majority's views of the other branches of government. Lain speaks of the idea of when widespread attitudes change on a certain issue of time, but the law hasn’t changed, there is a certain type of pressure that builds up that implements change. Nevertheless, the changing of the attitudes gives force of the law in the way that one's attitude, values and policy preferences start to show in larger society settings. However, the only job of the court is to respond to prevailing norms that are unable to be decided in another form of the government branches.

The historic cases of Brown v. Board of Education and Furman V Georgia are some of the myriad examples of upside down judicial review. First, In Brown V Board, the Supreme Court single handily took on the Southern whites that were committed to segregation – and the justices were aware of this. Furthermore, the court decided to finally take on what other branches were scared to do. 1) The Supreme Court had a balance of public opinion on their side. 2) Brown invalidated a practice most states already rejected on their own. 3) Brown reflected deeper, tectonic changes in the race relations of the time. Nevertheless, Brown was an example of the Supreme Court “ Responding to, reflecting on, deep shifts in prevailing norms when the democratic process