Empirical Theories About Courts

Empirical Theories About Courts

Author: Keith O. Boyum

Publisher: Quid Pro Books

Published: 2015-11-17

Total Pages: 470

ISBN-13: 1610273176

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The classic and groundbreaking study of trial courts and other dispute processes — and foundational ways to think about researching them — is now available in a modern digital edition. It is edited by Professors Keith O. Boyum and Lynn Mather, and includes chapters from the leading theorists about courts and their research. Much cited and relevant today in how it frames the analysis of courts, this book's new republication features an additional Introduction and Afterword by the editors, with updates, and a new Foreword by Christina L. Boyd. As Boyd writes, “For nearly all civil and criminal cases the traditional model of court as a judge-dominated, formal adversary process of adjudication does not hold. What exists instead ... is so variable, complex, and dynamic that a proper study of courts must return to first principles. And that is precisely what an all-star list of interdisciplinary court scholars, many of whom have established storied careers as trial court experts, does so well within the chapters of this book.” She adds: “I find the text to be very contemporary. Empirical Theories About Courts’ design to focus on theory building rather than simply examining discrete datasets or engaging in data mining of a single set of observations is a key factor in the book’s longevity.” Quality ebook features includes linked Contents and notes, fully linked and paginated Index, proper formatting, and all of the tables and figures of the original properly presented. Part of the Classics of Law & Society Series from Quid Pro Books.


Procedural Justice and Relational Theory

Procedural Justice and Relational Theory

Author: Denise Meyerson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-29

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1000207668

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This book bridges a scholarly divide between empirical and normative theorizing about procedural justice in the context of relations of power between citizens and the state. Empirical research establishes that people’s understanding of procedural justice is shaped by relational factors. A central premise of this volume is that this research is significant but needs to be complemented by normative theorizing that draws on relational theories of ethics and justice to explain the moral significance of procedures and make normative sense of people’s concerns about relational factors. The chapters in Part 1 provide comprehensive reviews of empirical studies of procedural justice in policing, courts and prisons. Part 2 explores empirical and normative perspectives on procedural justice and legitimacy. Part 3 examines philosophical approaches to procedural justice. Part 4 considers the implications of a relational perspective for the design of procedures in a range of legal contexts. This collection will be of interest to a wide academic readership in philosophy, law, psychology and criminology.


The Behavior of Federal Judges

The Behavior of Federal Judges

Author: Lee Epstein

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2013-01-07

Total Pages: 491

ISBN-13: 0674070682

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Judges play a central role in the American legal system, but their behavior as decision-makers is not well understood, even among themselves. The system permits judges to be quite secretive (and most of them are), so indirect methods are required to make sense of their behavior. Here, a political scientist, an economist, and a judge work together to construct a unified theory of judicial decision-making. Using statistical methods to test hypotheses, they dispel the mystery of how judicial decisions in district courts, circuit courts, and the Supreme Court are made. The authors derive their hypotheses from a labor-market model, which allows them to consider judges as they would any other economic actors: as self-interested individuals motivated by both the pecuniary and non-pecuniary aspects of their work. In the authors' view, this model describes judicial behavior better than either the traditional “legalist” theory, which sees judges as automatons who mechanically apply the law to the facts, or the current dominant theory in political science, which exaggerates the ideological component in judicial behavior. Ideology does figure into decision-making at all levels of the federal judiciary, the authors find, but its influence is not uniform. It diminishes as one moves down the judicial hierarchy from the Supreme Court to the courts of appeals to the district courts. As The Behavior of Federal Judges demonstrates, the good news is that ideology does not extinguish the influence of other components in judicial decision-making. Federal judges are not just robots or politicians in robes.


The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research

The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research

Author: Peter Cane

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2012-05-17

Total Pages: 1112

ISBN-13: 019163543X

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The empirical study of law, legal systems and legal institutions is widely viewed as one of the most exciting and important intellectual developments in the modern history of legal research. Motivated by a conviction that legal phenomena can and should be understood not only in normative terms but also as social practices of political, economic and ethical significance, empirical legal researchers have used quantitative and qualitative methods to illuminate many aspects of law's meaning, operation and impact. In the 43 chapters of The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research leading scholars provide accessible and original discussions of the history, aims and methods of empirical research about law, as well as its achievements and potential. The Handbook has three parts. The first deals with the development and institutional context of empirical legal research. The second - and largest - part consists of critical accounts of empirical research on many aspects of the legal world - on criminal law, civil law, public law, regulatory law and international law; on lawyers, judicial institutions, legal procedures and evidence; and on legal pluralism and the public understanding of law. The third part introduces readers to the methods of empirical research, and its place in the law school curriculum.


Judicial Reputation

Judicial Reputation

Author: Nuno Garoupa

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2015-11-20

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 022629059X

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In "Judicial Reputation: A Comparative Theory, "Tom Ginsburg and Nuno Garoupa mean to explain how judges respond to the reputational incentives provided by the different audiences they interact with--lawyers and law professors; politicians; the media; and the public itself--as well as how legal systems design their judicial institutions to calibrate the locally appropriate balance among audiences. Making use by turns of careful empirical work and penetrating conceptual insights, Ginsburg and Garoupa argue that any given judicial structure is best understood not through the lens of legal culture, origin, or tradition, but through the economics of information and reputation.


National Courts and EU Law

National Courts and EU Law

Author: Bruno de Witte

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2016-06-24

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1783479906

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National Courts and EU Law examines both how and why national courts and judges are involved in the process of legal integration within the European Union. As well as reviewing conventional thinking, the book presents new legal and empirical insights into the issue of judicial behaviour in this process. The expert contributors provide a critical analysis of the key questions, examining the role of national courts in relation to the application of various EU legal instruments.


Comparative Matters

Comparative Matters

Author: Ran Hirschl

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0198714513

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Comparative study has emerged as the new frontier of constitutional law scholarship as well as an important aspect of constitutional adjudication. Increasingly, jurists, scholars, and constitution drafters worldwide are accepting that 'we are all comparativists now'. And yet, despite this tremendous renaissance, the 'comparative' aspect of the enterprise, as a method and a project, remains under-theorized and blurry. Fundamental questions concerning the very meaning and purpose of comparative constitutional inquiry, and how it is to be undertaken, are seldom asked, let alone answered. In this path-breaking book, Ran Hirschl addresses this gap by charting the intellectual history and analytical underpinnings of comparative constitutional inquiry, probing the various types, aims, and methodologies of engagement with the constitutive laws of others through the ages, and exploring how and why comparative constitutional inquiry has been and ought to be pursued by academics and jurists worldwide. Through an extensive exploration of comparative constitutional endeavours past and present, near and far, Hirschl shows how attitudes towards engagement with the constitutive laws of others reflect tensions between particularism and universalism as well as competing visions of who 'we' are as a political community. Drawing on insights from social theory, religion, history, political science, and public law, Hirschl argues for an interdisciplinary approach to comparative constitutionalism that is methodologically and substantively preferable to merely doctrinal accounts. The future of comparative constitutional studies, he contends, lies in relaxing the sharp divide between constitutional law and the social sciences. Comparative Matters makes a unique and welcome contribution to the comparative study of constitutions and constitutionalism, sharpening our understanding of the historical development, political parameters, epistemology, and methodologies of one of the most intellectually vibrant areas in contemporary legal scholarship.


Judges and Their Audiences

Judges and Their Audiences

Author: Lawrence Baum

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-01-10

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 140082754X

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What motivates judges as decision makers? Political scientist Lawrence Baum offers a new perspective on this crucial question, a perspective based on judges' interest in the approval of audiences important to them. The conventional scholarly wisdom holds that judges on higher courts seek only to make good law, good policy, or both. In these theories, judges are influenced by other people only in limited ways, in consequence of their legal and policy goals. In contrast, Baum argues that the influence of judges' audiences is pervasive. This influence derives from judges' interest in popularity and respect, a motivation central to most people. Judges care about the regard of audiences because they like that regard in itself, not just as a means to other ends. Judges and Their Audiences uses research in social psychology to make the case that audiences shape judges' choices in substantial ways. Drawing on a broad range of scholarship on judicial decision-making and an array of empirical evidence, the book then analyzes the potential and actual impact of several audiences, including the public, other branches of government, court colleagues, the legal profession, and judges' social peers. Engagingly written, this book provides a deeper understanding of key issues concerning judicial behavior on which scholars disagree, identifies aspects of judicial behavior that diverge from the assumptions of existing models, and shows how those models can be strengthened.


Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making

Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making

Author: Paul M. Collins, Jr.

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-08-15

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0199707227

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The U.S. Supreme Court is a public policy battleground in which organized interests attempt to etch their economic, legal, and political preferences into law through the filing of amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs. In Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making, Paul M. Collins, Jr. explores how organized interests influence the justices' decision making, including how the justices vote and whether they choose to author concurrences and dissents. Collins presents theories of judicial choice derived from disciplines as diverse as law, marketing, political science, and social psychology. This theoretically rich and empirically rigorous treatment of decision-making on the nation's highest court, which represents the most comprehensive examination ever undertaken of the influence of U.S. Supreme Court amicus briefs, provides clear evidence that interest groups play a significant role in shaping the justices' choices.