Courts, the state, and democratization in the United States

Abstract

The United States is facing an era of acute democratic fragility. The Supreme Court is often understood as a key countermajoritarian institution that often impedes democratization. But adopting an interbranch perspective, we show that the court has been a stronger champion of democratization in the United States than is typically recognized. National power has generally been necessary to overcome antidemocratic subnational policy, and national state power requires both standard setting and coercion. Using an original dataset of Supreme Court rulings on civil rights and racial equality, we show that the court was an earlier and more consistent champion of racial democratization than is generally understood but that in the absence of cooperation from the rest of the federal government's coercive apparatus, the court's standard-setting rulings had little impact. These findings suggest the conditions under which the protection of democratic gains might be possible.