Judicial Concepts

Changing the number of Supreme Court justices to alter its majority, most famously attempted by Franklin Roosevelt in 1937, and the wider debate over Supreme Court reform

Competing descriptions of how readily judges should overturn the decisions of elected officials, and labels both political sides apply to rulings they oppose

How the Constitution protects judges from political pressure, and the recurring fights over that protection

Congress's use of its power over federal court jurisdiction to remove certain kinds of cases from the courts, and the constitutional limits on doing so

The set of doctrines, including standing, ripeness, mootness, and the bar on advisory opinions, that determine whether a federal court may decide a dispute at all

Why federal judges serve for life, how tenures have lengthened, and proposals for term limits

The two leading approaches to interpreting the Constitution: reading it by its meaning when adopted, or as a document whose application evolves with society

The questions federal courts refuse to decide because the Constitution leaves them to Congress or the President

How past decisions bind future ones, and when the Supreme Court decides to overrule itself

Alexander Bickel's 1962 name for the tension between judicial review by unelected judges and democratic government, and the many attempts to resolve it