Kahn and the Glorious Long State of Courts and Parties

Abstract

This essay explores Ronald Kahn’s work, the work he inspired, and the responses to that work in this symposium as explanations and products of the long state of courts and parties. The essay begins by examining what Kahn described as the social construction process, the ways justices make decisions by applying polity and rights principles to new social developments. The essay then discusses the political construction of judicial review, focusing on how different strands of that scholarship complement and challenge the social construction process. This combination of the political construction of judicial review and the social construction process offers valuable insights into how justices made decisions during the long state of courts and parties, a regime in which being a legal elite rather than having partisan identification or holding particular constitutional opinions was the main qualification for joining the federal bench.