Taking the Law to Court: Citizen Suits and the Legislative Process

Citizen suits are a decentralized and relatively inclusive form of public contestation that allows individual citizens to influence the reach of public laws in courts. To many, citizens’ access to justice in policy-making is normatively appealing. The practice is vibrant in the U.S. and is gaining ground in a large number of old and new democracies alike. Yet, little is known about the consequences for the policy process of this dispersed form of authority. In this paper, I analyze how the institution of citizen suits influences decision-making in the legislature when citizens and their representatives are sharply divided regarding the value of a public good. I model legislators simultaneously bargaining over the budget and over its allocation between distributive and public good spending. Individual citizens on either side of the dispute can seek to modify, within bounds, the reach of the public good in court. This leads to a multitude of court disputes that cumulatively shapes a compromise regarding the effective reach of the policy in society. I find that in most scenarios, citizen suits induce legislators to craft more ambitious policies and help increase collective welfare. My results rest on the distinctions I draw between the two institutions: between a representative legislature that logrolls, and courts, staffed by unrepresentative but diverse judges, who are blind to distributive agreements, and where the agenda is set by citizens.