Alexander Mordecai Bickel (December 17, 1924 – November 7, 1974) was an American legal scholar and expert on the United States Constitution.
He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from City College of New York in 1947 and summa cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1949.
In 1950, he went to Europe as a law officer of the US State Department, serving in Frankfurt, Germany, and with the European Defense Community Observer Delegation in Paris.
He also defended President Richard Nixon's order to dismiss special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox.
In his book The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics, Bickel coined the term countermajoritarian difficulty to describe his view that judicial review stands in tension with democratic theory.
[7] Bickel envisioned the Supreme Court as playing a statesman-like role in national controversies, engaging in dialogue with the other branches of government.