We The Courts: When and How Do Courts Step Up to Protect Democracy?
We know when courts are needed to protect democracy. What we don't know is when and why they actually step up—and when they fail to do so. This project answers that question. It develops a three-condition framework arguing that courts protect democracy only when accumulated judicial reputation, individual judicial conviction, and a favorable political environment converge simultaneously. Courts have no armies; their power ultimately rests on their capacity to mobilize popular support and coordinate collective responses against executive overreach. Testing this framework through U.S. Supreme Court landmark confrontations and comparative evidence from Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, and El Salvador, the project shows that “democracy-preserving review” is a contingent institutional capacity—identifiable, cultivable, and destructible.
