Conventional wisdom has it that judicial review is counter-majoritarian in the sense that it nullifies laws passed by the majority. Yet despite the principal-agent issue of whether legislators faithfully fulfill their obligations, this is still a simplistic depiction and does not take into account when and where the majority is formed. It simply assumes that public opinion does not change once the laws are passed, and judicial review around the globe functions in the same way. This article tries to demonstrate that the Constitutional Court in Taiwan is indeed a majoritarian court from three perspectives: docket records, agenda-setting, and case studies. This article argues that, owing to its institutional crisis, the Court sides with the majority most of the time in the sense that it rarely resists the contemporary congressional majority. Consequently, judicial supremacy does exist in Taiwan, but simply because it is in accordance with the majority. By contrast, judicial self-restraint, championed in many other countries as a virtue, is indeed counter-majoritarian. This characteristic directly affects the likelihood of whether the Court can bring about political and social change in the future.
