The preceding chapters have examined the circumstances that allowed judges to make influential decisions about the meaning of four federal labor statutes, decisions that shaped both labor law and the labor movement in the United States. In one of the three cases, the Supreme Court struck down an important prolabor provision of the statute on constitutional grounds. In the other three cases, judges stopped short of striking down provisions, but nevertheless made important policy decisions as they settled interpretive controversies about the meaning of legislative language. Each time judges settled interpretive controversies about a statutory provision, they justified their choices by claiming that they were following the will of Congress rather than their own personal policy preferences.

Up to now, scholars who have criticized those judicial decisions have focused on questions about whether or not the judges' decisions correctly matched the policy outcomes preferred by the elected legislators who created the statutes. Critics of the courts have drawn attention to the fact that the judicial rulings went against policy goals that many members of Congress and labor leaders articulated when the statutes passed. Because judicial rulings thwarted those expressed goals, critics have concluded that unelected judges were able to obstruct legislative reforms and thus were significant barriers to labor's efforts to produce change through the democratic processes of the legislative branch.

The conclusions growing out of this study are different.