@misc{149941,
  author = {Jonathan Kastellec},
  title = {Empirically Evaluating the Countermajoritarian Difficulty: Public Opinion, State Policy, and Judicial Review before Roe v. Wade},
  abstract = { I examine the relationship between public opinion, state policy, and judicial review to conduct a quantitative evaluation of the "counter-majoritarian difficulty," by examining the role of courts in adjudicating constitutional challenges to state abortion statutes in the period before~<em>Roe v. Wade</em>. Using new measures of judicial review and state-level opinion on abortion reform, I find considerable heterogeneity in the relationship between opinion and policy--in many states where sizable majorities favored reform, the status quo remained in place. I then find that judicial decisions striking down state statutes tended to occur in states where support for reforming policy was high, and courts did~<em>not</em>~strike down statutes in states where majorities firmly supported the status quo. These results contribute to a growing body of evidence that suggests that the traditional view of judicial review as being fundamentally counter-majoritarian does not adequately capture the political realities in which courts operate. },
  year = {2016},
  journal = {Journal of Law and Courts},
  volume = {4},
  pages = {1{\textendash}42},
  publisher = {University of Chicago Press Chicago, IL},
  url = {https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/EN0Z6B},
  language = {eng},
}