ABOUT THIS BOOK

In this interdisciplinary book in an interdisciplinary series, Dave Bridge crosses methodological boundaries to offer readers insights on the political “pushback” that historically follows Supreme Court rulings with which most Americans disagree. After developing a framework for identifying the Court’s rare countermajoritarian decisions, Bridge shows how those decisions that liberals backed in the 1950s through the 1970s consistently upset conservative factions in the Democratic Party, which always managed to weather the storms—that is until Roe v. Wade in 1973. In Pushback, Bridge offers compelling hypotheses about how the two major parties can use unpopular Supreme Court rulings to shift the political momentum and win elections. He then puts those hypotheses to the test, analyzing the political fallout of recent rulings on controversial issues such as Obamacare, same-sex marriage, and religious liberty.

Certain to appeal to anyone interested in American political science and history, Pushback closes with a detailed examination of the unequivocally countermajoritarian Supreme Court ruling of our lifetimes, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe. For the first time in 50 years, conditions are ripe for a party to win votes by campaigning against the will of the Court. Upcoming elections will tell if the Republicans overplayed their hand, or if Democrats will play theirs as skillfully as did the GOP after Roe.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Dave Bridge is Associate Professor of Political Science at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He studies Supreme Court politics, focusing on inter-branch dynamics and the relationship between the judiciary and political parties. He received his Ph.D. from University of Southern California and is the coauthor of Constitutional Government: The American Experience.

REVIEWS

“This wonderful book deserves widespread attention. It is a remarkable piece of work and one that is provocative in the best sense of the word.”—Laura Kalman, Distinguished Research Professor of History, UC Santa Barbara, author of FDR’s Gambit: The Court-Packing Fight and the Rise of Legal Liberalism

“Pushback offers a deep insight into the Supreme Court’s role in constructing, sustaining, and ultimately undermining the regimes students of American political development have identified. Dave Bridge argues that the Supreme Court often responds to signals from factions within a governing coalition, articulating the principles those factions believe characterize the regime they support. But, just as political time is only loosely connected to calendar time, so too is judicial time only loosely connected to political time. Sometimes Court decisions push the boundaries of a regime’s principles beyond the point where they are politically sustainable, thereby opening up the opportunity for the regime’s opponents—and potential successors—to make the Court’s decisions a focus of their campaigns: backlash, in short. Bridge applies his analysis to a range of contemporary constitutional issues, identifying those that are (and aren’t) good candidates for party-building pushback. Bridge’s provocative and important argument should become a major element in future scholarship on the Supreme Court and regime politics.”—Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law emeritus, Harvard Law School, coauthor of Constitutionalism and Its Discontents

“An important and insightful contribution to our understanding of the Supreme Court’s role in American politics. A substantively rich account of the Warren and Burger Courts, and a theoretically valuable analysis of how the least democratic branch of the federal government is made to feel popular pressures.”—Keith E. Whittington, Princeton University, author of Repugnant Laws: Judicial Review of Acts of Congress from the Founding to the Present

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

List of Tables and Figures

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Countermajoritarian Difficulty and Regime Politics

Chapter 2: Theory

Chapter 3: Prayer

Chapter 4: Crime

Chapter 5: Busing

Chapter 6: Abortion

Chapter 7: Lessons

Chapter 8: Contemporary Issues

Chapter 9: The Elephant in the Room

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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