SCOTUS and Legitimacy

The recent SCOTUS decisions are legitimate because their legitimacy comes from the Constitution.

It does not mean that the President Biden and many Americans do not agree with the rulings that the SCOTUS’s legitimacy is at risk or in crisis.

In his textbook Key Concepts in Politics and International Relations (2015), Andrew Heywood defines the concept of legitimacy as follows:

The German sociologist Max Weber proposed three ideal types of political legitimacy: traditional authority, charismatic authority and legal-rational authority. The ideal-type that concerns the United States is legal-rational authority.

Heywood explains legal-rational authority in his textbook Politics (2019):

The SCOTUS’s power of judicial review comes from Marbury v Madison (1803). Since that decision, any President or Congress has questioned the ruling, hence, the power of judicial review became the norm, and it is the principles of separation of power and checks and balances in action, which are the principles that underlie the Constitution.

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