Clarifying Judicial Aggrandizement by Allen Sumrall, Beau J. Baumann :: SSRN

Clarifying Judicial Aggrandizement - SSRN

25 Pages Posted:

Allen Sumrall

Law School & Government Department, Unversity of Texas at Austin

Beau J. Baumann

United States Department of Justice

Date Written: July 4, 2023

Abstract

Scholars argue that the Roberts Court has been engaged in a judicial “power grab.” Some scholars describe the Court as “juristocratic,” others “aggrandizing.” The Court’s supporters argue that these critics’ charges only thinly veil the critics’ policy differences with the Court. Is the Roberts Court’s power materially different from other Courts that preceded it? If the charge is about “judicial activism,” do the critics hold the Warren Court to the same standard?

Scholarship about the Roberts Court has encountered a long-running difficulty; “judicial power” is an amorphous braid of norms, ideas, and institutional arrangements. We advance a taxonomy for understanding the different aspects of contemporary judicial power by untangling several concepts: judicial supremacy, juristocracy, judicial activism, and judicial self-aggrandizement. Of these criterion, the Roberts Court’s exceptional feature is its judicial self-aggrandizement, where it deploys demeaning rhetoric about other constitutional actors and invokes ideas about its own importance to justify the centralization of power in the judiciary.