This article focuses on the justification of a positive and a negative attitude respectively towards judicial review in a democracy. The analysis is performed by analyzing texts by four American theorists theorists with different opinions on the subject: Robert Dahl, Jeremy Waldron, Erwin Chemerinsky and Ronald Dworkin. The study shows that there are significant disagreements concerning democratic values between those who take a positive and those who take a negative attitude to judicial review inter alia on the understanding of democracy in terms of process or substance, rule by the broad mass of the people or rule by an elite, the spirit of the community or the rights of the individual. The analysis also points to significant disagreements on the important democratic concepts of liberty and equality.