ABSTRACT
The Supreme Court is often referred to as the Marble Palace. The justices don robes and speak what seems to outsiders to be a foreign language. The Court is a mystery, and the justices seem to like it that way. The expansive decisions and broad remedies would seem to cause the most potential problems. Some charge that footnote four opened the door for the broad activist remedies that get the Court in trouble, raising the specter of the institutional constraints. The legitimacy of the Court is its most important resource. As long as the Court is perceived to be fulfilling its role, it will retain its authority. The risk is that the Court will overstep its boundaries. The Court is most justified in exercising the broad prerogatives when it is protecting civil rights or individual liberties. The justices have taken great pains to claim that the Court was engaged in a legitimate judicial act, rather than a questionable political one.
