The Politics of Litigation
45 Pages Posted: 19 Sep 2017
Date Written: September 16, 2017
Abstract
Litigation is part of the American policymaking playbook as diverse groups routinely turn to courts to pursue their agendas. All of this litigation raises questions about its consequences. This essay examines the literature on the political risks of litigation. It argues that this literature identifies four potential risks — crowd out, path dependence, backlash and individualization — but offers less insight into the likelihood of these risks in practice. It ends by offering suggestions about how to advance our understanding of when litigation casts a negative political shadow in the current age of judicialization.
Keywords: litigation, rights, backlash, path dependence, crowd out, individualization
JEL Classification: K00, K10, K40, K41
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation