The Pernicious Myth of Judicial Supremacy

The Pernicious Myth of Judicial Supremacy
The Annual Herbert W. Vaughan Lecture on America’s Founding Principles
April 20, 2016
Nearly all of American constitutional law today rests on a myth. That myth – taught as unquestioned truth from grade school to law school – is that the power of constitutional interpretation belongs exclusively to the U.S. Supreme Court; that the Court’s decisions are thus every bit as much “supreme law of the land” as the Constitution itself; and that the other branches of government, the states, and We the People, accordingly are bound by the Supreme Court’s interpretations of the Constitution, in every instance – no matter what the Court decides to hold.

So the myth goes. Every feature of the myth is wrong.

Michael Stokes Paulsen is Distinguished University Chair and Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas, where he has taught since 2007.
https://www.stthomas.edu/law/facultystaff/a-z-index/michael-paulsen.html

Endowed by the late Herbert "Wiley" Vaughan, founding member of the Madison Program's Advisory Council, the Herbert W. Vaughan Lecture on America’s Founding Principles is an endowed Princeton University lecture that is hosted by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions in the Department of Politics. Its purpose is to promote and advance understanding of the founding principles and core doctrines of American constitutionalism.