- Volume 60, Issue 1
- Page 213
Response
Well, Should They?
A Response to If People Would Be Outraged by Their Rulings, Should Judges Care?
Andrew B. Coan
In at least some hard cases, the Justices of the United States Supreme Court almost certainly moderate their decisions--or avoid deciding altogether--so as not to provoke the public. Cass Sunstein's characteristically insightful and engaging article is an attempt to justify this practice, and in the process, to define its proper limits. In this, Sunstein follows in the footsteps of Alexander Bickel, whose pathbreaking The Least Dangerous Branch was devoted to the same cause. Their emphases are different, however. The heart of Bickel's book is his account of the “passive virtues,” such as the justiciability and vagueness doctrines, that courts use to avoid decision or to rule narrowly where a broad decision might unduly provoke the public. Sunstein's focus is why judges should care about public outrage in the first place.