Considering Legitimacy

• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020

Considering Legitimacy

GILLIAN E. METZGER*

ABSTRACT

This Article on Richard Fallon’s Law and Legitimacy in the Supreme Court

focuses on public acceptance of the Supreme Court’s authority, what Fallon

calls sociological legitimacy. After setting out Fallon’s accounts of legitimacy

and constitutional argumentation, the Article looks at public opinion data and

political science scholarship on the extent to which the Court’s decisions affect

public acceptance of the Court. It then turns to the normative question of

whether, even if the Court’s decisions may undermine its sociological legiti-

macy, that impact is a legally legitimate factor for the Court to consider. The

Article argues that strategic consideration of the Court’s public legitimacy can

be an appropriate factor in the Justices’ decision making, but such considera-

tion may end up actually harming the Court’s reputation if undertaken openly

and candidly as Fallon would seem to require.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. FALLON’S ACCOUNT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357

A. Multiple Legitimacies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357

B. The Practice of Constitutional Adjudication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359

C. A Sympathetic Critique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361

II. SOCIOLOGICAL LEGITIMACY AND CONSTITUTIONAL

ADJUDICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364

A. Politicized Decision Making and Public Acceptance of the

Supreme Court . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364

B. Is the Court’s Consideration of Sociological Legitimacy

Defensible?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370

C. Candor and Sociological Legitimacy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378

* Harlan Fiske Stone Professor of Constitutional Law, Columbia Law School. Special thanks to

Dick Fallon for writing such a wonderful book, to Randy Barnett for the invitation to participate in the

Cooley Symposium, to participants in the Columbia Law School faculty workshop for their helpful

comments, and to Tyler Finn for exceptional research assistance. © 2020, Gillian E. Metzger.

353

It would be hard to imagine a more auspicious time for a symposium on

Richard Fallon’s Law and Legitimacy in the Supreme Court. The legitimacy of

the Supreme Court is at the forefront of political and public life to an extent not

seen for decades.

1

To be sure, attacks on the Supreme Court from both sides of

the political spectrum have been growing for years.

2

But today challenges to the

Court are at new levels, pushed there by the deep political divides over the courts

that were evident in the recent political battles over Justice Kavanaugh’s conf‌ir-

mation and Judge Merrick Garland’s failed nomination, and the resultant shift to

the right of the Court’s membership.

3

Both conservative and liberal commenta-

tors portray the Supreme Court’s legitimacy as under threat, though they diverge

dramatically in their accounts of the source of that threat and how the Court

should respond.

4

The Court’s legitimacy is increasingly a subject for legal

1. See, e.g., Barry Friedman, The Coming Storm over the Supreme Court, N.Y. TIMES (Oct. 18,

2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/opinion/kavanaugh-supreme-court-conservative.html

[https://perma.cc/QL7Q-BTG5].

2. See, e.g., Eric R. Claeys, Sebelius and the Election, NAT’L REV. (July 30, 2012), https://www.

nationalreview.com/2012/07/sebelius-and-election-eric-r-claeys/ [https://perma.cc/U5RY-ZNUN] (criticizing

Chief Justice Roberts for violating principles of statutory interpretation in order to uphold the

constitutionality of Obamacare); Richard Hasen, The Chief Justice’s Long Game, N.Y. TIMES (June 25,

2013), https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/opinion/the-chief-Justices-long-game.html [https://perma.cc/

VPC9-TNAM] (critiquing Shelby Cty. v. Holder as a dramatic reversal of constitutional law hidden “behind

a cloak of judicial minimalism”); Anthony Lewis, Abroad at Home: The Supreme Power, N.Y. TIMES (June

29, 1999), https://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/29/opinion/abroad-at-home-the-supreme-power.htm l [https://

perma.cc/P9ZA-C9ZK] (labelling the Rehnquist Court “a band of radical judicial activists determined to

impose on the Constitution their notion of a proper system of government”); Howard Slugh, Obergefell’s

Toxic Judicial Legacy, NAT’L REV. (Apr. 10, 2017), https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/04/obergefell-

judges-invent-rights/ [https://perma.cc/5G3S-GF4B] (complaining that Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion

in Obergefell v. Hodges encouraged “judges [to] read inventive new rights into the Constitution”) For a

discussion of the criticism directed at the Warren Court’s judicial activism, see BARRY FRIEDMAN, THE WILL

OF THE PEOPLE 244, 257–58 (2009).

3. See Linda Greenhouse, The Broken Supreme Court, N.Y. TIMES (Apr. 13, 2017), https://www.

nytimes.com/2018/06/21/opinion/supreme-court-janus-unions.html [https://perma.cc/5NQQ-NS4R];

Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux & Oliver Roeder, Is the Supreme Court Facing A Legitimacy Crisis?,

FIVETHIRTYEIGHT (Oct. 1 2018), https://f‌ivethirtyeight.com/features/is-the-supreme-court-facing-a-

legitimacy-crisis/ [https://perma.cc/8UK6-75D9]; Matthew Yglesias, Brett Kavanaugh’s Conf‌irmation

Will Delegitimize the Supreme Court—And That’s Good, VOX (Oct. 5, 2018), https://www.vox.com/

2018/10/5/17941312/brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court-legitimacy [https://perma.cc/SLX8-43VX].

4. Compare, e.g., William McGurn, John Roberts’s ‘Illegitimate’ Court, WALL ST. J. (May 27,

2019), https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-robertss-illegitimate-court-11558989312 [https://perma.cc/

SW3S-6EWG] (arguing that not overturning Roe out of fear of political response undercuts the Court’s

legitimacy), and Ilya Shapiro, How the Supreme Court Undermines Its Own Legitimacy, WASH.

EXAMINER (July 18, 2019), https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/how-the-supreme-court-

undermines-its-own-legitimacy [https://perma.cc/Q7FR-X949] (arguing that deciding cases with an eye

to political repercussions destroys the public belief that the Court is moved by law and not politics,

which is central to its legitimacy), with Leah Litman et al., We Ought to Be Concerned About Preserving

the Political Order of the Supreme Court, WASH. POST (June 18, 2019), https://www.washingtonpost.

com/opinions/yes-the-publics-perception-of-the-supreme-court-matters/2019/06/18/5b25128c-91e6-11e9-

b58a-a6a9afaa0e3e_story.html [https://perma.cc/9CTE-WR3L] (arguing it is legitimate for the Court to

take its public legitimacy into account).

354 THE GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LAW & PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 18:353