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- Title
We and the People: Selbstverständnis und politische Rolle des U.S. Supreme Court.
- Authors
Sigwart, Hans-Jörg
- Abstract
This article focuses on the particular political position and function of the U.S. Supreme Court within the American constitutional framework and within current American politics and raises the question of whether and how the court's respective self-conception concurs with and influences its particular political role. From its peculiar position between law and politics and its function as a guard of the Constitution, the Supreme Court traditionally derives the claim of being a particularly independent and impartial political institution independent not only from the other branches of government, but also from the momentary currents of public opinion. Behind this background, the court's current political role turns out to oscillate between two possibilities. While on the one hand the court is in danger of becoming one of the central battlegrounds of the current American »culture war« between liberals and conservatives and therewith of coming into a fundamental conflict both with its constitutional role and its own self-conception, there is also looming, on the other hand, a peculiarly constructive role the court may be able to play within this "culture war" situation. The final chapter of this article argues that particularly the discussion on the issue of "judicial transnationalism" indicates such a constructive role.
- Subjects
UNITED States; UNITED States. Supreme Court; UNITED States. Constitution; POLITICAL science; LAW &; politics; PUBLIC opinion; CULTURE conflict; LIBERALS; CONSERVATIVES; TRANSNATIONALISM; UNITED States politics &; government, 21st century
- Publication
Zeitschrift für Politik, 2010, Vol 57, Issue 4, p363
- ISSN
0044-3360
- Publication type
Article