Courts, Legislatures, and Social Reform: A Comparative Study

Abstract

In an article written over a decade ago, Robert Dahl demonstrates through citing many well-known events in American constitutional history that the Supreme Court of the United States is in the long run highly unlikely to prevent the enactment of any alternatives sought by a lawmaking majority. 1 Those social scientists who are aware of his may have asked themselves whether it is valid not only for the U.S. Supreme Court but for any independent judiciary. While this question cannot be answered within the confines of one article, one article can nevertheless indicate whether is strongly supported for one broad area of lawmaking by an examination of events in each of several countries with independent judiciaries. A major purpose of the present study is to determine whether DahI's argument is supported in the area of government regulation of business 2 by testimony from three members of the British Commonwealth of Nations-India, Canada, and Australia. Unless the contrary is clear from the context, the phrase Dahl's thesis henceforth will be used to indicate Dahl's converted into a generalization about countries with independent judiciaries but limited to the area of government regulation of business. Much of the testimony which I shall marshall in testing will also help me to achieve my second aim, i.e., to buttress the generalization that a country with judicial review whose judges are tools neither of the branches nor of an all-dominant political party will