Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review

Authors

Gerard E. Lynch, Columbia Law SchoolFollow

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

1980

Abstract

John Hart Ely's Democracy and Distrust is an ambitious attempt to create a new theory of judicial review, breaking away from both "interpretivism" and "noninterpretivism" – a division Professor Ely regards as a "false dichotomy" (p. vii). The book is brilliant and provocative, so much so that one fears less that its faults will be obscured – there is little danger that polemic critics will fail to pounce on them – than that the flash of Professor Ely's reasoning and the controversy it generates will distract us from the genuine importance of the insight that powers his analysis.

Disciplines

Constitutional Law | Judges | Law

Comments

Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review by John Hart Ely, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980, pp. 268, $15.00.

Recommended Citation

Gerard E. Lynch, Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review, 80 Colum. L. Rev. 857 (1980).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2121