Judicial Review, Plural Weighted Voting, and Democracy

This paper examines an important argument that has received little attention despite its wide implications. This is the claim that judicial review can be equated with plural weighted voting (PwV) because both are justified as instruments to achieve better outcomes, and both violate political equality. We take this argument to be a reductio: given that plural voting is unacceptable, judicial review must be rejected. If correct, this claim threatens to undermine much recent liberal democratic theorising. We argue that none of the obvious routes to distinguish judicial review from PwV offer a convincing way to distinguish these two schemes. Furthermore, this has important implications for how we should understand judicial review. The result is thus significant not only for the particular issues mentioned, but also for our understanding of the role instrumental justifications play in democratic theory