How to Reconcile the Majority's Will with Strong Judicial Review

Abstract

This paper discusses various ways to reconcile the people’s will with countermajoritarian court rulings in systems of strong judicial review. Its main focus lies on the constitutional system of the United States of America. The collision of procedural based democracy and powerful courts is covered in the first part of this paper. In the second part, several practical solutions for this conflict are presented. Some of them could be realistically used to reconcile the majority’s will with strong courts’ rulings. The third part of this paper focuses on the evaluation of these instruments’ usability in the Federal Republic of Germany. Existing tensions between the people’s will, particularities of the German Basic Law, and the laws of the European Union are covered.