Judging Policy

Judging Policy PDF Author: Matthew M. Taylor
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804786798
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Courts, like other government institutions, shape public policy. But how are courts drawn into the policy process, and how are patterns of policy debate shaped by the institutional structure of the courts? Drawing on the experience of the Brazilian federal courts since the transition to democracy, Judging Policy examines the judiciary's role in public policy debates. During a period of energetic policy reform, the high salience of many policies, combined with the conducive institutional structure of the judiciary, ensured that Brazilian courts would become an important institution at the heart of the policy process. The Brazilian case thus challenges the notion that Latin America's courts have been uniformly pliant or ineffectual, with little impact on politics and policy outcomes. Judging Policy also inserts the judiciary into the scholarly debate regarding the extent of presidential control of the policy process in Latin America's largest nation. By analyzing the full Brazilian federal court system—including not only the high court, but also trial and appellate courts—the book develops a framework with cross-national implications for understanding how courts may influence policy actors' political strategies and the distribution of power within political systems.

Judging Policy

Judging Policy PDF Author: Matthew M. Taylor
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804786798
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book Here

Book Description
Courts, like other government institutions, shape public policy. But how are courts drawn into the policy process, and how are patterns of policy debate shaped by the institutional structure of the courts? Drawing on the experience of the Brazilian federal courts since the transition to democracy, Judging Policy examines the judiciary's role in public policy debates. During a period of energetic policy reform, the high salience of many policies, combined with the conducive institutional structure of the judiciary, ensured that Brazilian courts would become an important institution at the heart of the policy process. The Brazilian case thus challenges the notion that Latin America's courts have been uniformly pliant or ineffectual, with little impact on politics and policy outcomes. Judging Policy also inserts the judiciary into the scholarly debate regarding the extent of presidential control of the policy process in Latin America's largest nation. By analyzing the full Brazilian federal court system—including not only the high court, but also trial and appellate courts—the book develops a framework with cross-national implications for understanding how courts may influence policy actors' political strategies and the distribution of power within political systems.

Judging Law and Policy

Judging Law and Policy PDF Author: Robert M. Howard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136887601
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
To what extent do courts make social and public policy and influence policy change? This innovative text analyzes this question generally and in seven distinct policy areas that play out in both federal and state courts—tax policy, environmental policy, reproductive rights, sex equality, affirmative action, school finance, and same-sex marriage. The authors address these issues through the twin lenses of how state and federal courts must and do interact with the other branches of government and whether judicial policy-making is a form of activist judging. Each chapter uncovers the policymaking aspects of judicial process by investigating the current state of the law, the extent of court involvement in policy change, the responses of other governmental entities and outside actors, and the factors which influenced the degree of implementation and impact of the relevant court decisions. Throughout the book, Howard and Steigerwalt examine and analyze the literature on judicial policy-making as well as evaluate existing measures of judicial ideology, judicial activism, court and legal policy formation, policy change and policy impact. This unique text offers new insights and areas to research in this important field of American politics.

Judging Inequality

Judging Inequality PDF Author: James L. Gibson
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 161044907X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
Social scientists have convincingly documented soaring levels of political, legal, economic, and social inequality in the United States. Missing from this picture of rampant inequality, however, is any attention to the significant role of state law and courts in establishing policies that either ameliorate or exacerbate inequality. In Judging Inequality, political scientists James L. Gibson and Michael J. Nelson demonstrate the influential role of the fifty state supreme courts in shaping the widespread inequalities that define America today, focusing on court-made public policy on issues ranging from educational equity and adequacy to LGBT rights to access to justice to worker’s rights. Drawing on an analysis of an original database of nearly 6,000 decisions made by over 900 judges on 50 state supreme courts over a quarter century, Judging Inequality documents two ways that state high courts have crafted policies relevant to inequality: through substantive policy decisions that fail to advance equality and by rulings favoring more privileged litigants (typically known as “upperdogs”). The authors discover that whether court-sanctioned policies lead to greater or lesser inequality depends on the ideologies of the justices serving on these high benches, the policy preferences of their constituents (the people of their state), and the institutional structures that determine who becomes a judge as well as who decides whether those individuals remain in office. Gibson and Nelson decisively reject the conventional theory that state supreme courts tend to protect underdog litigants from the wrath of majorities. Instead, the authors demonstrate that the ideological compositions of state supreme courts most often mirror the dominant political coalition in their state at a given point in time. As a result, state supreme courts are unlikely to stand as an independent force against the rise of inequality in the United States, instead making decisions compatible with the preferences of political elites already in power. At least at the state high court level, the myth of judicial independence truly is a myth. Judging Inequality offers a comprehensive examination of the powerful role that state supreme courts play in shaping public policies pertinent to inequality. This volume is a landmark contribution to scholarly work on the intersection of American jurisprudence and inequality, one that essentially rewrites the “conventional wisdom” on the role of courts in America’s democracy.

Reflections on Judging

Reflections on Judging PDF Author: Richard A. Posner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674184653
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
In Reflections on Judging, Richard Posner distills the experience of his thirty-one years as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Surveying how the judiciary has changed since his 1981 appointment, he engages the issues at stake today, suggesting how lawyers should argue cases and judges decide them, how trials can be improved, and, most urgently, how to cope with the dizzying pace of technological advance that makes litigation ever more challenging to judges and lawyers. For Posner, legal formalism presents one of the main obstacles to tackling these problems. Formalist judges--most notably Justice Antonin Scalia--needlessly complicate the legal process by advocating "canons of constructions" (principles for interpreting statutes and the Constitution) that are confusing and self-contradictory. Posner calls instead for a renewed commitment to legal realism, whereby a good judge gathers facts, carefully considers context, and comes to a sensible conclusion that avoids inflicting collateral damage on other areas of the law. This, Posner believes, was the approach of the jurists he most admires and seeks to emulate: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, Learned Hand, Robert Jackson, and Henry Friendly, and it is an approach that can best resolve our twenty-first-century legal disputes.

Judging Democracy

Judging Democracy PDF Author: Christopher P. Manfredi
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9781551117027
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
"This is an important, concise, and well-written book that provides readers with bold insights into the converging patterns of jurisprudence in the field of election law in Canada and the United States." - Cynthia Ostberg, University of the Pacific

Judges on Judging

Judges on Judging PDF Author: David M. O'Brien
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 150634030X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 625

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Book Description
Thoroughly revised and updated for this Fifth Edition, Judges on Judging offers insights into the judicial philosophies and political views of those on the bench. Broad in scope, this one-of-a-kind book features “off-the-bench” writings and speeches in which Supreme Court justices, as well as lower federal and state court judges, discuss the judicial process, constitutional interpretation, judicial federalism, and the role of the judiciary. Engaging introductory material written by David M. O’Brien provides students with necessary thematic and historical context making this book the perfect supplement to present a nuanced view of the judiciary.

Fear of Judging

Fear of Judging PDF Author: Kate Stith
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226774862
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
For two centuries, federal judges exercised wide discretion in criminal sentencing. In 1987 a complex bureaucratic apparatus termed Sentencing "Guidelines" was imposed on federal courts. FEAR OF JUDGING is the first full-scale history, analysis, and critique of the new sentencing regime, arguing that it sacrifices comprehensibility and common sense.

Judging Statutes

Judging Statutes PDF Author: Robert A. Katzmann
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199362130
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Drawing upon his background in law, government and political science, U.S. Second Circuit Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann contends that Congress's work product - including sources beyond the text - must inform courts' interpretation of statutes.

Judging Economic Policy

Judging Economic Policy PDF Author: Taylor & Francis Group
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367016999
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
In this engaging volume, the editors present the influential work of economist Gottfried Haberler, whom Paul Samuelson judges qualified for about two-and-a-half Nobel prizes in economics. Throughout the book, Haberlers essays reveal the clarity of his analyses and his ability to identify crucial policy choices, whether grappling with issues of inflation, unemployment, trade, or development. Presenting Haberler as the eclectic economist he is, the editors show that far from being an ideologue, Haberler is an economist who uses whatever approaches and theories are appropriate for the problems he considers. Paul Samuelson judges that Gottfried Haberlers work should qualify him for about two-and-a-half Nobel Prizes in economicsone for his quantum improvement in trade theory beyond Ricardos paradigm of labors comparative advantage, one for his definitive synthesis of business cycle theory, and beyond these his policy wisdom over a period of six decades. It is Haberlers policy wisdom that serves as the basis for this comprehensive collection of the eminent economists work.Throughout the book, Haberlers contributions demonstrate the clarity of his analyses for exploring the complex economics of policy issues and for identifying key governmental responses to problems of unemployment, trade, and development. Presenting Haberler as the eclectic economist he is, the editors show that far from being an ideologue, Haberler is an economist who uses whatever approaches and theories are appropriate for the problems he considers. The portrait that emerges is one of a multifaceted thinker, able to choose freely among competing theories and to effectively apply them to complex and demanding policy issues.

Limits of Legality

Limits of Legality PDF Author: Jeffrey Brand-Ballard
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195342291
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
Judges sometimes hear cases in which the law, as they honestly understand it, requires results that they consider morally objectionable. Most people assume that, nevertheless, judges have an ethical obligation to apply the law correctly, at least in reasonably just legal systems. This is the view of most lawyers, legal scholars, and private citizens, but the arguments for it have received surprisingly little attention from philosophers. Combiming ethical theory with discussions of caselaw, Jeffrey Brand-Ballard challenges arguments for the traditional view, including arguments from the fact that judges swear oaths to uphold the law, and arguments from our duty to obey the law, among others. He then develops an alternative argument based on ways in which the rule of law promotes the good. Patterns of excessive judicial lawlessness, even when morally motivated, can damage the rule of law. Brand-Ballard explores the conditions under which individual judges are morally responsible for participating in destructive patterns of lawless judging. These arguments build upon recent theories of collective intentionality and presuppose an agent-neutral framework, rather than the agent-relative framework favored by many moral philosophers. Defying the conventional wisdom, Brand-Ballard argues that judges are not always morally obligated to apply the law correctly. Although they have an obligation not to participate in patterns of excessive judicial lawlessness, an individual departure from the law so as to avoid an unjust result is rarely a moral mistake if the rule of law is otherwise healthy. Limits of Legality will interest philosophers, legal scholars, lawyers, and anyone concerned with the ethics of judging.