Courts suppress entrenchment indirectly by enforcing individual rights, not systemic values

Evidence

While many of these judicial interventions have had the effect of limiting opportunities for political entrenchment, entrenchment has not typically been the doctrinal focus. Instead, courts have tended to frame their role as enforcing individual rights, leaving systemic concerns like preserving political competition and preventing entrenchment mostly offstage. Nonetheless, recognition and disapproval of electoral entrenchment not infrequently bubble to the surface of judicial opinions. … Courts have been especially skeptical of ballot access restrictions imposed upon third parties and independent candidates when these restrictions “operate to freeze the political status quo.” — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 108

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A durable anti-entrenchment doctrine persists precisely by denying its real purpose; the ideology of individual rights does the systemic work of preserving competition without ever saying so.
• XREF: Bear directly on the reader’s question: a rationalizing ideology may be most sticky when it is internalized as about something else entirely. — connects to: Constitutional entrenchment is real only where not subject to judicial or interpretive change — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 464; Courts may not let moral condemnation override their limited institutional role — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1774; Courts frame policy issues in terms of legal rights, not costs and benefits (+5 more)
• SEED: Angle: ‘Doctrinal camouflage’ — when institutions function most durably through rationalizations that genuinely believe their own cover story.

Broader Connections

• Courts frame policy issues in terms of legal rights, not costs and benefits #expands (0.80)
• Courts reason in terms of legal rights and duties, not costs and benefits. #expands (0.80) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2855
• Even conservative courts make decisions that expand individual rights dramatically #exemplifies (0.78) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 4400
• Courts may not let moral condemnation override their limited institutional role #expands (0.75) — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 1774
• State courts protect rights the federal Constitution does not guarantee #exemplifies (0.72) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 3371
• Courts rejected maximization of land value as the measure of owners’ rights #exemplifies (0.70) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 950