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.

The Strategic Analysis of Judicial Behavior
The Strategic Analysis of Judicial Behavior

Author: Lee Epstein

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-06-17

Total Pages: 101

ISBN-13: 1009058738

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The past decade has witnessed a worldwide explosion of work aimed at illuminating judicial-behavior: the choices judges make and the consequences of their choices. We focus on strategic accounts of judicial-behavior. As in other approaches to judging, preferences and institutions play a central role but strategic accounts are unique in one important respect: They draw attention to the interdependent - i.e., the strategic - nature of judicial decisions. On strategic accounts, judges do not make decisions in a vacuum, but rather attend to the preferences and likely actions of other actors, including their colleagues, superiors, politicians, and the public. We survey the major methodological approaches for conducting strategic analysis and consider how scholars have used them to provide insight into the effect of internal and external actors on the judges' choices. As far as these studies have traveled in illuminating judicial-behavior, many opportunities for forward movement remain. We flag four in the conclusion.

The Puzzle of Judicial Behavior
The Puzzle of Judicial Behavior

Author: Lawrence Baum

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2009-10-22

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0472022636

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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.

Reputation and Judicial Tactics
Reputation and Judicial Tactics

Author: Shai Dothan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 1107031133

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This book argues that national and international courts seek to enhance their reputations through the strategic exercise of judicial power. Courts often cannot enforce their judgments and must rely on reputational sanctions to ensure compliance. One way to do this is for courts to improve their reputation for generating compliance with their judgments. When the court's reputation is increased, parties will be expected to comply with its judgments and the reputational sanction on a party that fails to comply will be higher. This strategy allows national and international courts, which cannot enforce their judgments against states and executives, to improve the likelihood that their judgments will be complied with over time. This book describes the judicial tactics that courts use to shape their judgments in ways that maximize their reputational gains.

The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Judicial Behavior
The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Judicial Behavior

Author: Lee Epstein

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 625

ISBN-13: 019957989X

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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.

Perils of Judicial Self-Government in Transitional Societies
Perils of Judicial Self-Government in Transitional Societies

Author: David Kosař

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-04

Total Pages: 487

ISBN-13: 1107112125

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This book investigates the mechanisms of judicial control to determine an efficient methodology for independence and accountability. Using over 800 case studies from the Czech and Slovak disciplinary courts, the author creates a theoretical framework that can be applied to future case studies and decrease the frequency of accountability perversions.

Ideology in the Supreme Court
Ideology in the Supreme Court

Author: Lawrence Baum

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2017-05-16

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 0691175527

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Ideology in the Supreme Court is the first book to analyze the process by which the ideological stances of U.S. Supreme Court justices translate into the positions they take on the issues that the Court addresses. Eminent Supreme Court scholar Lawrence Baum argues that the links between ideology and issues are not simply a matter of reasoning logically from general premises. Rather, they reflect the development of shared understandings among political elites, including Supreme Court justices. And broad values about matters such as equality are not the only source of these understandings. Another potentially important source is the justices' attitudes about social or political groups, such as the business community and the Republican and Democratic parties. The book probes these sources by analyzing three issues on which the relative positions of liberal and conservative justices changed between 1910 and 2013: freedom of expression, criminal justice, and government "takings" of property. Analyzing the Court's decisions and other developments during that period, Baum finds that the values underlying liberalism and conservatism help to explain these changes, but that justices' attitudes toward social and political groups also played a powerful role. Providing a new perspective on how ideology functions in Supreme Court decision making, Ideology in the Supreme Court has important implications for how we think about the Court and its justices.

Why Children Follow Rules
Why Children Follow Rules

Author: Tom R. Tyler

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0190644141

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Legal socialization is the process by which children and adolescents acquire their law related values, attitudes, and reasoning capacities. Such values and attitudes, in particular legitimacy, underlie the ability and willingness to consent to laws and defer to legal authorities that make legitimacy based legal systems possible. By age eighteen a person's orientation toward law is largely established, yet legal scholarship has largely ignored this process in favor of studying adults and their relationship to the law. Why Children Follow Rules focuses upon legal socialization outlining what is known about the process across three related, but distinct, contexts: the family, the school, and the juvenile justice system. Throughout, Tom Tyler and Rick Trinkner emphasize the degree to which individuals develop their orientations toward law and legal authority upon values connected to responsibility and obligation as opposed to fear of punishment. They argue that authorities can act in ways that internalize legal values and promote supportive attitudes. In particular, consensual legal authority is linked to three issues: how authorities make decisions, how they treat people, and whether they recognize the boundaries of their authority. When individuals experience authority that is fair, respectful, and aware of the limits of power, they are more likely to consent and follow directives. Despite clear evidence showing the benefits of consensual authority, strong pressures and popular support for the exercise of authority based on dominance and force persist in America's families, schools, and within the juvenile justice system. As the currently low levels of public trust and confidence in the police, the courts, and the law undermine the effectiveness of our legal system, Tom Tyler and Rick Trinkner point to alternative way to foster the popular legitimacy of the law in an era of mistrust.

Judging Russia
Judging Russia

Author: Alexei Trochev

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2008-04-28

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1139471104

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This is a study of the actual role that the Russian Constitutional Court played in protecting fundamental rights and resolving legislative-executive struggles and federalism disputes in both Yeltsin's and Putin's Russia. Trochev argues that judicial empowerment is a non-linear process with unintended consequences and that courts that depend on their reputation flourish only if an effective and capable state is there to support them. This is because judges can rely only on the authoritativeness of their judgments, unlike politicians and bureaucrats, who have the material resources necessary to respond to judicial decisions. Drawing upon systematic analysis of all decisions of the Russian Court (published and unpublished) and previously unavailable materials on their (non-)implementation, and resting on a combination of the approaches from comparative politics, law, and public administration, this book shows how and why judges attempted to reform Russia's governance and fought to ensure compliance with their judgments.