Pushback: The Political Fallout of Unpopular Supreme Court Decisions - Hardcover

by Dave Bridge (Author)

In this interdisciplinary book in an interdisciplinary series, Dave Bridge crosses methodological boundaries to offer readers insights on the political "push­back" that historically follows Supreme Court rulings with which most Americans disagree. After developing a framework for identifying the Court's rare countermajor­itarian decisions, Bridge shows how those decisions that liberals backed in the 1950s through the 1970s consistently upset con­servative factions in the Democratic Party, which always managed to weather the storms--that is until Roe v. Wade in 1973. In Pushback, Bridge offers compelling hy­potheses about how the two major parties can use unpopular Supreme Court rulings to shift the political momentum and win elections. He then puts those hypotheses to the test, analyzing the political fallout of recent rulings on controversial issues such as Obamacare, same-sex marriage, and religious liberty.

Author Biography

Dave Bridge is Associate Professor of Political Science at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He studies Supreme Court politics, focusing on inter-branch dynamics and the relationship between the judiciary and political parties. He received his Ph.D. from University of Southern California and is the coauthor of Constitutional Government: The American Experience.