What Justices Want

What Justices Want PDF Author: Matthew E. K. Hall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108682170
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
The most sophisticated theories of judicial behavior depict judges as rational actors who strategically pursue multiple goals when making decisions. However, these accounts tend to disregard the possibility that judges have heterogeneous goal preferences - that is, that different judges want different things. Integrating insights from personality psychology and economics, this book proposes a new theory of judicial behavior in which judges strategically pursue multiple goals, but their personality traits determine the relative importance of those goals. This theory is tested by analyzing the behavior of justices who served on the US Supreme Court between 1946 and 2015. Using recent advances in text-based personality measurement, Hall evaluates the influence of the 'big five' personality traits on the justices' behavior during each stage of the Court's decision-making process. What Justices Want shows that personality traits directly affect the justices' choices and moderate the influence of goal-related situational factors on justices' behavior.

The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 1789–2020

The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 1789–2020 PDF Author: Lucas A. Powe, Jr.
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700632816
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 1789–2020, Expanded Second Edition is a history of the Court placed within the context of a broader history of the United States and its politics. In contrast to a typical book on US history, where the Supreme Court appears, if at all, as an interruption here and there, or, in a typical history of the Supreme Court, where political events intrude occasionally, Lucas A. Powe, Jr., situates the Court and its work into a broad narrative of American history. Powe places the Court within the context of history and the insights of political science while remaining true to the ways the justices perceived their own work. Instead of viewing the Court as a competitor with the other two branches of government (although occasionally it is), Powe views it as a part of a ruling regime doing its part to implement the regime’s policies. Some of its most historically controversial decisions are far less so when set within the politics of the time. Justices are, after all, as subject to the same economic, social, and intellectual currents as other upper-middle-class professional elites. The book’s dominant theme is that the Court is a majoritarian institution—that is, it identifies with and serves ruling political coalitions. The justices are for the most part in tune with their times. Relatedly, changes in personnel matter; a president able to appoint several justices can, and does, change the direction of the Court. Thus, the Court and its decisions have moved to the center of presidential politics. This new edition adds two chapters detailing the history of the Court since 2008, including how the Court has changed election law, its entrance into the healthcare controversies, expansion of LBGTQ rights, and the 2020 Census controversies. The first new chapter looks at the centrist jurisprudence of Justice Anthony Kennedy and his dominant presence as the decisive vote in a series of 5–4 decisions. The second looks at the toxic partisan political climate in the aftermath of Justice Scalia’s death and Republican control of the Court.

What Justices Want

What Justices Want PDF Author: Matthew E. K. Hall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108682170
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
The most sophisticated theories of judicial behavior depict judges as rational actors who strategically pursue multiple goals when making decisions. However, these accounts tend to disregard the possibility that judges have heterogeneous goal preferences - that is, that different judges want different things. Integrating insights from personality psychology and economics, this book proposes a new theory of judicial behavior in which judges strategically pursue multiple goals, but their personality traits determine the relative importance of those goals. This theory is tested by analyzing the behavior of justices who served on the US Supreme Court between 1946 and 2015. Using recent advances in text-based personality measurement, Hall evaluates the influence of the 'big five' personality traits on the justices' behavior during each stage of the Court's decision-making process. What Justices Want shows that personality traits directly affect the justices' choices and moderate the influence of goal-related situational factors on justices' behavior.

The Credentialed Court

The Credentialed Court PDF Author: Benjamin H. Barton
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1641772050
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
The Credentialed Court starts by establishing just how different today’s Justices are from their predecessors. The book combines two massive empirical studies of every Justice’s background from John Jay to Amy Coney Barrett with short, readable bios of past greats to demonstrate that today’s Justices arrive on the Court with much narrower experiences than they once did. Today’s Justices have spent more time in elite academic settings (both as students and faculty) than any previous Court. Every current Justice but Barrett attended either Harvard or Yale Law School, and four of the Justices were tenured professors at prestigious law schools. They also spent more time as Federal Appellate Court Judges than any previous Court. These two jobs (tenured law professor and appellate judge) share two critical components: both jobs are basically lifetime appointments that involve little or no contact with the public at large. The modern Supreme Court Justices have spent their lives in cloistered and elite settings, the polar opposite of past Justices. The current Supreme Court is packed with a very specific type of person: type-A overachievers who have triumphed in a long tournament measuring academic and technical legal excellence. This Court desperately lacks individuals who reflect a different type of “merit.” The book examines the exceptional and varied lives of past greats from John Marshall to Thurgood Marshall and asks how many, if any, of these giants would be nominated today. The book argues against our current bookish and narrow version of meritocracy. Healthier societies offer multiple different routes to success and onto bodies like our Supreme Court.

Beyond Elite Law

Beyond Elite Law PDF Author: Samuel Estreicher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316654095
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 757

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Book Description
Are Americans making under $50,000 a year compelled to navigate the legal system on their own, or do they simply give up because they cannot afford lawyers? We know anecdotally that Americans of median or lower income generally do without legal representation or resort to a sector of the legal profession that - because of the sheer volume of claims, inadequate training, and other causes - provides deficient representation and advice. This book poses the question: can we - at the current level of resources, both public and private - better address the legal needs of all Americans? Leading judges, researchers, and activists discuss the role of technology, pro bono services, bar association resources, affordable solo and small firm fees, public service internships, and law student and nonlawyer representation.

The Rule of Lawyers

The Rule of Lawyers PDF Author: Walter K. Olson
Publisher: Truman Talley Books
ISBN: 9781429979085
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Big-ticket litigation is a way of life in this country. But something new is afoot--something typified by the $246 billion tobacco settlement, and by courtroom assaults that have followed against industries ranging from HMOs to gunmakers, from lead paint manufacturers to "factory farms." Each massive class-action suit seeks to invent new law, to ban or tax or regulate something that elected lawmakers had chosen to leave alone. And each time the new process works as intended, the new litigation elite reaps billions in fees--which they invest in fresh rounds of suits, as well as political contributions. The Rule of Lawyers asks: Who picks these lawyers, and who can fire them? Who protects the public's interest when settlements are negotiated behind closed doors? Where are our elected lawmakers in all this? The answers may determine whether we slip from the rule of law to the rule of lawyers.

The Judicial Tug of War

The Judicial Tug of War PDF Author: Adam Bonica
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108898440
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Why have conservatives decried 'activist judges'? And why have liberals - and America's powerful legal establishment - emphasized qualifications and experience over ideology? This transformative text tackles these questions with a new framework for thinking about the nation's courts, 'the judicial tug of war', which not only explains current political clashes over America's courts, but also powerfully predicts the composition of courts moving forward. As the text demonstrates through novel quantitative analyses, a greater ideological rift between politicians and legal elites leads politicians to adopt measures that put ideology and politics front and center - for example, judicial elections. On the other hand, ideological closeness between politicians and the legal establishment leads legal elites to have significant influence on the selection of judges. Ultimately, the judicial tug of war makes one point clear: for good or bad, politics are critical to how judges are selected and whose interests they ultimately represent.

The Supreme Court Bar

The Supreme Court Bar PDF Author: Kevin T. McGuire
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813914497
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Who represents litigants in the Supreme Court of the United States? Kevin T. McGuire shows that the most sophisticated of them have the advantage of representation by an elite counsel made up of former clerks to the justices, alumni of the Office of the Solicitor General, partners in powerful Washington law firms, and public interest lawyers, all of whom serve as gatekeepers to the Court. In this study, the first to characterize the bar of the Supreme Court as a whole, McGuire uses survey, archival, and interview data to explore the history and social structure of the community of Supreme Court specialists. In so doing, he assesses the strategic politics of Supreme Court practice, the ways in which dominant litigators can shape the Court's decisions, and what the existence of such an elite implies for judicial fairness.

Towards Juristocracy

Towards Juristocracy PDF Author: Ran Hirschl
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674038677
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
In countries and supranational entities around the globe, constitutional reform has transferred an unprecedented amount of power from representative institutions to judiciaries. The constitutionalization of rights and the establishment of judicial review are widely believed to have benevolent and progressive origins, and significant redistributive, power-diffusing consequences. Ran Hirschl challenges this conventional wisdom. Drawing upon a comprehensive comparative inquiry into the political origins and legal consequences of the recent constitutional revolutions in Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and South Africa, Hirschl shows that the trend toward constitutionalization is hardly driven by politicians' genuine commitment to democracy, social justice, or universal rights. Rather, it is best understood as the product of a strategic interplay among hegemonic yet threatened political elites, influential economic stakeholders, and judicial leaders. This self-interested coalition of legal innovators determines the timing, extent, and nature of constitutional reforms. Hirschl demonstrates that whereas judicial empowerment through constitutionalization has a limited impact on advancing progressive notions of distributive justice, it has a transformative effect on political discourse. The global trend toward juristocracy, Hirschl argues, is part of a broader process whereby political and economic elites, while they profess support for democracy and sustained development, attempt to insulate policymaking from the vicissitudes of democratic politics.

The New Judiciary

The New Judiciary PDF Author: Kate Malleson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351885073
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
During the last thirty years, the judiciary has undergone an unprecedented expansion in its size and power. Judges now have more influence over our private and public lives than ever before. The effect of this change has been to transform the judiciary from an inward-looking elite into an increasingly heterogeneous professional body. 'The New Judiciary' examines the developments which have taken place in the appointment, training and scrutiny of judges as a result of the expanding judicial role. It highlights the increasing tension between the requirements of judicial independence and accountability which these changes are producing. The traditional insulation of the judiciary from all external influences is being challenged by the need for greater openness and public scrutiny of the judicial process. The passing of the Human Rights Act 1998, incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law represents another stage in this process by expanding the policy-making role of the senior judiciary still further. As a result, the continuing modernisation of the judiciary, which is the subject of this book, will be a increasingly important feature of the legal and political process in the years ahead.

The Supreme Court and Benign Elite Democracy in Japan

The Supreme Court and Benign Elite Democracy in Japan PDF Author: Professor Hiroshi Itoh
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409497178
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 582

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Book Description
The Constitution of Japan has served the country for more than half a century, creating and maintaining a stable and functional democratic system. This book innovatively interprets Japanese politics as a ‘benign elite democracy’ whilst demonstrating the Supreme Court's vital contribution to the political structure. In The Supreme Court and Benign Elite Democracy in Japan, Hiroshi Itoh presents the first empirical study of judicial decision making under Japan's Constitution. He examines the Supreme Court’s records regarding the protection of civil rights and liberties, the preservation of the conformity of lower levels of laws and regulations to the Constitution, and the maintenance of the Court's relationships to the political branches. The analysis of these three aspects of constitutional litigation reveal how the Supreme Court contributes to the efficacy of constitutional democracy by keeping the system adaptable to the ever-changing environment in and around Japan.