Author: Pamela C. Corley
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804786321
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
The U.S. Supreme Court typically rules on cases that present complex legal questions. Given the challenging nature of its cases and the popular view that the Court is divided along ideological lines, it's commonly assumed that the Court routinely hands down equally-divided decisions. Yet the justices actually issue unanimous decisions in approximately one third of the cases they decide. Drawing on data from the U.S. Supreme Court database, internal court documents, and the justices' private papers, The Puzzle of Unanimity provides the first comprehensive account of how the Court reaches consensus. Pamela Corley, Amy Steigerwalt, and Artemus Ward propose and empirically test a theory of consensus; they find consensus is a function of multiple, concurrently-operating forces that cannot be fully accounted for by ideological attitudes. In this thorough investigation, the authors conclude that consensus is a function of the level of legal certainty and its ability to constrain justices' ideological preferences.
Author: Lawrence Baum
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472022636
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 230
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Book Description
From local trial courts to the United States Supreme Court, judges' decisions affect the fates of individual litigants and the fate of the nation as a whole. Scholars have long discussed and debated explanations of judicial behavior. This book examines the major issues in the debates over how best to understand judicial behavior and assesses what we actually know about how judges decide cases. It concludes that we are far from understanding why judges choose the positions they take in court. Lawrence Baum considers three issues in examining judicial behavior. First, the author considers the balance between the judges' interest in the outcome of particular cases and their interest in other goals such as personal popularity and lighter workloads. Second, Baum considers the relative importance of good law and good policy as bases for judges' choices. Finally Baum looks at the extent to which judges act strategically, choosing their own positions after taking into account the positions that their fellow judges and other policy makers might adopt. Baum argues that the evidence on each of these issues is inconclusive and that there remains considerable room for debate about the sources of judges' decisions. Baum concludes that this lack of resolution is not the result of weaknesses in the scholarship but from the difficulty in explaining human behavior. He makes a plea for diversity in research. This book will be of interest to political scientists and scholars in law and courts as well as attorneys who are interested in understanding judges as decision makers and who want to understand what we can learn from scholarly research about judicial behavior. Lawrence Baum is Professor of Political Science, Ohio State University.
Author: Peter McCormick
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774861746
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
Any court watcher knows that the Supreme Court of Canada delivers some of its major constitutional judgments in a “By the Court” format. The abandonment of the common law tradition of attributing decisions to individual judges in favour of an anonymous and unanimous approach is unique among Western democracies. By the Court is the first major study of these unanimous and anonymous decisions and features a complete inventory, chronology, and typology of these cases. Some significant examples include the Secession of Quebec reference and the Carter decision on assisted suicide. Peter McCormick and Marc Zanoni also ask where and why the idea emerged and whether it signals a genuinely collegial authorship or simply masks the dominance of the Chief Justice. Ultimately, By the Court explores the purposes and potential future of “By the Court,” framing this practice as the most dramatic form of a modern style that highlights the institution and downplays individual contributions.
Author: Rachel Cahill-O'Callaghan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509921877
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 231
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Book Description
This book examines the significance of values in Supreme Court decision making. Drawing on theories and techniques from psychology, it focuses on the content analysis of judgments and uses a novel methodology to reveal the values that underpin decision making. The book centres on cases which divide judicial opinion: Dworkin's hard cases 'in which the result is not clearly dictated by statute or precedent'. In hard cases, there is real uncertainty about the legal rules that should be applied, and factors beyond traditional legal sources may influence the decision-making process. It is in these uncertain cases – where legal developments can rest on a single judicial decision – that values are revealed in the judgments. The findings in this book have significant implications for developments in law, judicial decision making and the appointment of the judiciary.
Author: Donald R. Songer
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 077353928X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 237
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Book Description
In a ground-breaking study on the nature of judicial behaviour in the Supreme Court of Canada, Donald Songer, Susan Johnson, C.L. Ostberg, and Matthew Wetstein use three specific research strategies to consider the ways in which justices seek to make decisions grounded in "good law" and to show how these decisions are shaped within a collegial court. The authors use confidential interviews with Supreme Court justices, analysis of their rulings from 1970 to 2005, and measures that tap their perceived ideological tendencies to provide a critical examination of the ideological roots of judicial decision making, uncovering the complexity of contemporary judicial behaviour. Examining judicial behaviour through the lens of three different research strategies grounded in qualitative and quantitative methodologies,Law, Ideology, and Collegialitypresents compelling evidence that political ideology is a key factor in decision making and a prominent source of conflict in the Supreme Court of Canada.
Author: Lee Epstein
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 1483376613
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 873
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Book Description
The Supreme Court Compendium provides historical and statistical information on the Supreme Court: its institutional development; caseload; decision trends; the background, nomination, and voting behavior of its justices; its relationship with public, governmental, and other judicial bodies; and its impact. With over 180 tables and figures, this new edition is intended to capture the full retrospective picture through the 2013-2014 term of the Roberts Court and the momentous decisions handed down within the last four years, including United States v. Windsor, National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, and Shelby County v. Holder.
Author: Lee Epstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191505358
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 671
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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Judicial Behavior offers readers a comprehensive introduction and analysis of research regarding decision making by judges serving on federal and state courts in the U.S. Featuring contributions from leading scholars in the field, the Handbook describes and explains how the courts' political and social context, formal institutional structures, and informal norms affect judicial decision making. The Handbook also explores the impact of judges' personal attributes and preferences, as well as prevailing legal doctrine, influence, and shape case outcomes in state and federal courts. The volume also proposes avenues for future research in the various topics addressed throughout the book. Consultant Editor for The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics: George C. Edwards III.
Author: Christopher P. Banks
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 1483317021
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 775
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Book Description
The Judicial Process: Law, Courts, and Judicial Politics is an all-new, concise yet comprehensive core text that introduces students to the nature and significance of the judicial process in the United States and across the globe. It is social scientific in its approach, situating the role of the courts and their impact on public policy within a strong foundation in legal theory, or political jurisprudence, as well as legal scholarship. Authors Christopher P. Banks and David M. O’Brien do not shy away from the politics of the judicial process, and offer unique insight into cutting-edge and highly relevant issues. In its distinctive boxes, “Contemporary Controversies over Courts” and “In Comparative Perspective,” the text examines topics such as the dispute pyramid, the law and morality of same-sex marriages, the “hardball politics” of judicial selection, plea bargaining trends, the right to counsel and “pay as you go” justice, judicial decisions limiting the availability of class actions, constitutional courts in Europe, the judicial role in creating major social change, and the role lawyers, juries and alternative dispute resolution techniques play in the U.S. and throughout the world. Photos, cartoons, charts, and graphs are used throughout the text to facilitate student learning and highlight key aspects of the judicial process.
Author: Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190222697
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
Since America's founding, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued a vast number of decisions on a staggeringly wide variety of subjects. And hundreds of judges have occupied the bench. Yet as Cass R. Sunstein, the eminent legal scholar and bestselling co-author of Nudge, points out, almost every one of the Justices fits into a very small number of types regardless of ideology: the hero, the soldier, the minimalist, and the mute. Heroes are willing to invoke the Constitution to invalidate state laws, federal legislation, and prior Court decisions. They loudly embrace first principles and are prone to flair, employing dramatic language to fundamentally reshape the law. Soldiers, on the other hand, are skeptical of judicial power, and typically defer to decisions made by the political branches. Minimalists favor small steps and only incremental change. They worry that bold reversals of long-established traditions may be counterproductive, producing a backlash that only leads to another reversal. Mutes would rather say nothing at all about the big constitutional issues, and instead tend to decide cases on narrow grounds or keep controversial cases out of the Court altogether by denying standing. As Sunstein shows, many of the most important constitutional debates are in fact contests between the four Personae. Whether the issue involves slavery, gender equality, same-sex marriage, executive power, surveillance, or freedom of speech, debates have turned on choices made among the four Personae--choices that derive as much from psychology as constitutional theory. Sunstein himself defends a form of minimalism, arguing that it is the best approach in a self-governing society of free people. More broadly, he casts a genuinely novel light on longstanding disputes over the proper way to interpret the constitution, demonstrating that behind virtually every decision and beneath all of the abstract theory lurk the four Personae. By emphasizing the centrality of character types, Sunstein forces us to rethink everything we know about how the Supreme Court works.
Author: Todd C. Peppers
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804753821
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
Courtiers of the Marble Palace explores how law clerks are hired and utilized by United States Supreme Court justices.
