Academic

And from the text:

Future demand to limit judicial review depends on how that power will be used. The Supreme Court is only imperfectly representative of what most Montanans understand their Constitution to mean. Misalignment between judicial and popular constitutional meanings can produce a demand to realign the judicial understanding with the popular understanding, especially when the judicial understanding prevents expression of the popular understanding in ordinary legislation. While in such circumstances it is not impossible for a state citizenry to check an adventurous court through elections, judicial campaigns are a crude proxy for constitutional discourse. For example, a supreme court campaign that appears to concern criminal procedure may actually be about the right to a clean and healthful environment. The constitutional initiative is a more direct method of ?correcting? the Court when it strays from the popular understanding of the Constitutional text?in practical terms, the specific meaning that supported enactment of the challenged law and would receive majority approval on the amendment ballot.

A court that too often disregards what Professor James Lopach has called the persisting value of popular sovereignty reflected in the constitutional structure can damage democratic politics. Sweeping decisions may embed inflexible interpretations in the 1972 Constitution that limit the political process just as much as the detailed proscriptions of the 1889 Constitution. This, then, can trigger popular demand for amendments that either roll back broad constitutional protections or insert specific policy judgments into the constitutional text, replacing interpretative detail with even more rigid textual detail.

Significantly, the potential use of the constitutional initiative also may prevent strongly countermajoritarian rulings, consistent with Professor Laura Langer?s finding that state supreme courts account for potential retaliation from political branches in their exercise of judicial review. In significant cases, the Court speaks in such important policy areas as school finance, environmental protection, and personal privacy, but it avoids displacing vast areas of policymaking power when it does so. Cases that do not purport to be the last word on a controversial constitutional question are less likely to encourage voters to test that premise. They invite deliberation and reform through democratic processes, beginning rather than ending the constitutional conversation. Given the Constitution?s majoritarian power of constitutional initiative, the Supreme Court?s generally sensitive use of judicial review has helped maintain the document?s original text.