Publication Date
3-2025
Document Type
Article
First Page
75
Abstract
This Article reexamines and reconceptualizes Justice Louis Brandeis’ dictum in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, which describes States as “laboratories of democracy,” by highlighting the critical yet underexplored role of state courts in laboratories framework. Justice Brandeis envisioned States as independent arenas where social and economic policies could be tested without endangering the entire nation, a principle that Justice Brandeis, lawmakers, courts and scholars have traditionally applied to state legislatures. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, likewise, reinforces this Brandeisian laboratories account by crafting doctrines that preserve state autonomy and encourage state legislative experimentation unimpeded by federal actors. However, this legislative-centric view of democratic experimentation is incomplete.
While state legislatures have long been seen as the primary laboratories for fostering innovation through autonomy, choice, and local interests, this Article argues that state courts play an equally vital role in shaping democratic processes. State courts do far more than interpret statutory law, define state constitutional rights or adjudicate local disputes—they are active agents of democratic experimentation. With procedural flexibility and unique institutional powers distinct from federal courts—including electoral accountability, direct democracy influences, and administrative and rulemaking authority—judicial laboratories wield power that often rivals, overlaps or even supplants that of state legislatures. These courts experiment not only in the interpretation of rights but also in shaping the structure and function of legal institutions, developing policy models and administering solutions for democratic governance that reflect, serve and respond to local needs and values. Indeed, from eviction moratoria, gerrymandering, zoning and school finance, state courts—many enjoying electoral mandates and democratic legitimacy—have stepped into the democratic breach to legally usurp legislative authority, in the name of democracy, to address social and economic matters of local concern.
Repository Citation
Gerald
S.
Dickinson,
Judicial Laboratories,
27
U. Pa. J. Const. L.
75
(2025).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/jcl/vol27/iss1/2
