Download or read book The Variable Power of Courts written by Manoj S. Mate and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation analyzed the extraordinary expansion of the power of the Supreme Court of India from 1967 to 2007, through close study of the Court's politically significant decisions in the areas of fundamental rights and governance. During this period, the justices of the Supreme Court India shifted toward greater activism in constitutional interpretation, and toward heightened, albeit selective, assertiveness, and greater authority, in challenging the exercise of Central Government power. Referencing existing public law theories, this study sought to provide an explanatory account of this shift by analyzing both the motives that drove judicial activism and assertiveness and the opportunity structure for judicial power. The interaction of these two factors are examined through close analysis of the Court's decision-making in politically significant rights and governance decisions, through field interviews with retired judges, legal scholars and other experts on the Court, and through analysis of news editorial coverage of these decisions. To understand the expansion of the power of the Indian Court, this study looks both within the Court, highlighting the sources of the judges' institutional values and policy worldviews, and outside the Court to understand how the broader political, and professional and intellectual elite environment, both shaped and constrained the assertiveness and authority of the Court. I argue that the Court's shift toward activism, selective assertiveness, and greater authority in rights can most adequately be explained by the thesis of "elite institutionalism." According to the thesis of elite institutionalism, the unique institutional environment and intellectual atmosphere of the Court shapes the institutional perspectives and policy worldviews that drove activism and selective assertiveness in rights and governance decisions. I found that the identity of judges as members of the Supreme Court and judicial branch, and their professional alignment with the Court as an institution was a source of the judges' values and motivations in key decisions. Indeed, much of the Court's activism and assertiveness was driven by the judges' desire to protect constitutionalism and fundamental rights and the Court's role in protecting both, and later, a drive in the post-Emergency era to build popular support to bolster the Court's legitimacy. This is in line with "historical new institutionalist" scholarship (e.g. Gillman 1993) that suggests that judges may be motivated by a unique "institutional mission" that flows from their membership and identification with the judicial branch (see Gillman 1993; Keck 2008). Elite institutionalism, however, differs from existing institutionalist theories by situating judicial decision-making within the larger intellectual milieu and context of Indian judging. I argued in this study that judges' institutional mission or outlook/identity is a subset or part of a judges' overall intellectual identity and worldviews, which judges tend to share with professional and intellectual elites in India. The Indian judiciary--the judges of the Indian Supreme Court and High Courts--reflect the broader ethos of professional and intellectual elite opinion nationally. I contend that the justices of the Court were part of, and influenced by broader elite "meta-regimes"--The collective values or currents of professional and intellectual elite opinion on a set of constitutional or political issues. In the pre-Emergency period, the Court's basic structure doctrine decisions were shaped and influenced by the meta-regime of "constitutionalism." In the area of fundamental rights, shifts in the Court's activism and selective assertiveness in fundamental rights cases in the post-Emergency era (1977-2007) reflected a broader shift from influence of the meta-regime of "liberal democracy" to that of "liberal reform. In the area of governance, I suggest that broader shifts in the Court's activism and selective assertiveness reflected a shift from the meta-regime of social justice, to liberal reform. The study also illustrates how the thesis of elite institutionalism helps complement and broaden the strategic model of the political opportunity structure. In the post-Emergency era, and in particular, in the post-1990 period, the Court's authority was bolstered by stronger levels of intellectual and professional elite opinion, and national public support. This was because political regimes in the post-1990 era perceived that the Court had higher levels of public support vis-à-vis the Executive and Parliament (as illustrated by elite news coverage of the Court's decisions, and news coverage of public reactions and debate within Parliament and among ministers in the Executive branch). Political regimes in this era were reluctant to attack or resist the Court's assertive judicial decisions in rights and governance cases, because of public support for the Court's relative effectiveness in ameliorating governance failures. The Court's strong level of authority, then, was not only a result of the weakening of political institutions at the Central Government level. In addition, the Court's authority has been bolstered by the elite media and leaders of the Indian Bar who have played a crucial role in framing and shaping public perception of the Court's activist and assertive decisions. Media elites, and other governance constituencies such as the Bar, policy groups, court-appointed commissions, and opposition parties in the Central Government, have continued to play a crucial role as a powerful ally and advocate for the Court's activism and selective assertiveness in fundamental rights decisions. This is reflected in the strong levels of support in national newspapers' editorial coverage of most of the Court's assertive and deferential decisions in the post-1990 period. The national news media, the Bar, and opposition political parties have thus emerged as "watchdogs" (see Vanberg 2001; Staton 2002) that enable other elites, and the national public to monitor the Central Government's compliance with the Court's decisions in the area of fundamental rights. The thesis of elite institutionalism illustrates how the media and legal elites, and governance constituencies, can help constrain political actors and bolster the authority of courts, by closely scrutinizing government policies for compliance with the rule of law and constitutional norms.

Download or read book The Limits of Judicial Power written by William Lasser and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-10-01 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lasser examines in detail four periods during which the Court was widely charged with overstepping its constitutional power: the late 1850s, with the Dred Scott case and its aftermath; the Reconstruction era; the New Deal era; and the years of the Warren and Burger Courts after 1954. His thorough analysis of the most controversial decisions convincingly demonstrates that the Court has much more power to withstand political reprisal than is commonly assumed. Originally published in 1988. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Download or read book Judicial Power as a Variable Motivating Supreme Court Behavior written by Harold J. Spaeth and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Constrained Court written by Michael A. Bailey and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-11 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do Supreme Court justices decide their cases? Do they follow their policy preferences? Or are they constrained by the law and by other political actors? The Constrained Court combines new theoretical insights and extensive data analysis to show that law and politics together shape the behavior of justices on the Supreme Court. Michael Bailey and Forrest Maltzman show how two types of constraints have influenced the decision making of the modern Court. First, Bailey and Maltzman document that important legal doctrines, such as respect for precedents, have influenced every justice since 1950. The authors find considerable variation in how these doctrines affect each justice, variation due in part to the differing experiences justices have brought to the bench. Second, Bailey and Maltzman show that justices are constrained by political factors. Justices are not isolated from what happens in the legislative and executive branches, and instead respond in predictable ways to changes in the preferences of Congress and the president. The Constrained Court shatters the myth that justices are unconstrained actors who pursue their personal policy preferences at all costs. By showing how law and politics interact in the construction of American law, this book sheds new light on the unique role that the Supreme Court plays in the constitutional order.

Download or read book Curbing the Court written by Brandon L. Bartels and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-20 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What motivates political actors with diverging interests to respect the Supreme Court's authority? A popular answer is that the public serves as the guardian of judicial independence by punishing elected officials who undermine the justices. Curbing the Court challenges this claim, presenting a new theory of how we perceive the Supreme Court. Bartels and Johnston argue that, contrary to conventional wisdom, citizens are not principled defenders of the judiciary. Instead, they seek to limit the Court's power when it suits their political aims, and this inclination is heightened during times of sharp partisan polarization. Backed by a wealth of observational and experimental data, Bartels and Johnston push the conceptual, theoretical, and empirical boundaries of the study of public opinion of the courts. By connecting citizens to the strategic behavior of elites, this book offers fresh insights into the vulnerability of judicial institutions in an increasingly contentious era of American politics.

Download or read book The Politics of Precedent on the U S Supreme Court written by Thomas G. Hansford and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-21 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Politics of Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court offers an insightful and provocative analysis of the Supreme Court's most important task--shaping the law. Thomas Hansford and James Spriggs analyze a key aspect of legal change: the Court's interpretation or treatment of the precedents it has set in the past. Court decisions do not just resolve immediate disputes; they also set broader precedent. The meaning and scope of a precedent, however, can change significantly as the Court revisits it in future cases. The authors contend that these interpretations are driven by an interaction between policy goals and variations in the legal authoritativeness of precedent. From this premise, they build an explanation of the legal interpretation of precedent that yields novel predictions about the nature and timing of legal change. Hansford and Spriggs test their hypotheses by examining how the Court has interpreted the precedents it set between 1946 and 1999. This analysis provides compelling support for their argument, and demonstrates that the justices' ideological goals and the role of precedent are inextricably linked. The two prevailing, yet contradictory, views of precedent--that it acts either solely as a constraint, or as a "cloak" that never actually influences the Court--are incorrect. This book shows that while precedent can operate as a constraint on the justices' decisions, it also represents an opportunity to foster preferred societal outcomes.

Download or read book Raw Judicial Power written by Robert J. McKeever and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published here with a new chapter covering judgements from 1993 to 1995, Raw judicial power? is established as the definitive analysis of the powerful forces shaping the United States Supreme Court today. Robert J. McKeever analyses the approach of the Court to the most pressing contemporary social issues, such as capital punishment, abortion, race and affirmative action, gender equality and religion, sex and politics. He shows how social policy initiatives in the US have often come from the judicial rather than the legislative branch of government, leading to charges that the Supreme Court has been exercising 'raw judicial power'. He examines the policy decisions the Court has made, and argues that the Court has increasingly jettisoned traditional notions of constitutional interpretation in order to tackle the conflicts in contemporary American society. Students of American politics, constitutional law and social policy will all find this book invaluable.

Download or read book American Judicial Power written by Michael Buenger and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-27 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Judicial Power: The State Court Perspective is a welcome addition to the breadth of studies on the American legal system and provides an accessible and highly illuminating overview of the state courts and their functions. The study of America’s courts is overwhelmingly skewed toward the federal government, and therefore often overlooks state courts and their importance. Michael Buenger and Paul De Muniz fill this gap in the study of American constitutionalism, as they examine the wide and distinctive powers these courts exercise, and their role in administering the bulk of the nation’s justice system. This groundbreaking work covers many critical topics pertaining to the state courts, including: a comparison of the role of state and federal courts, the history of America’s state courts, the judicial selection processes utilized in the states, the unique roles assigned to state courts and the varying structure of those courts, the relationship between state judicial power and state legislative power, and the opportunities and challenges that are and will be facing the state courts. With an insightful foreword from Sanford Levinson, this revolutionary book will be of interest to students, educators, and researchers in the fields of law, political science, and government. Constitutional law experts will also benefit from an analysis of the state courts and their powers.

Download or read book The Nature of Supreme Court Power written by Matthew E. K. Hall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-06 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few institutions in the world are credited with initiating and confounding political change on the scale of the United States Supreme Court. The Court is uniquely positioned to enhance or inhibit political reform, enshrine or dismantle social inequalities, and expand or suppress individual rights. Yet despite claims of victory from judicial activists and complaints of undemocratic lawmaking from the Court's critics, numerous studies of the Court assert that it wields little real power. This book examines the nature of Supreme Court power by identifying conditions under which the Court is successful at altering the behavior of state and private actors. Employing a series of longitudinal studies that use quantitative measures of behavior outcomes across a wide range of issue areas, it develops and supports a new theory of Supreme Court power.

Download or read book The Constitution of Judicial Power written by Sotirios A. Barber and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barber shows that New Right theorists, such as Bork, and establishment liberals, such as Ronald Dworkin, are moral relativists who cannot escape conclusions ("might makes right," for example) that could destroy constitutionalism in America. The best hope for American freedoms, Barber argues, is to revive classical constitutionalism - and he explains how new movements in philosophy today allow the Court's friends to do just that. Written in a lively and engaging style.

Download or read book Terms of Engagement written by Clark Neily and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Government at every level is too big, too powerful, and too intrusive. But don’t blame just legislators and members of the executive branch for constantly overstepping their constitutional bounds. As Clark Neily argues in The Terms of Engagement, judges have more than their fair share of the blame. While liberals seek court rulings creating positive rights to things like free health care and conservatives call for judicial “restraint,” the end result is same: greater government power and diminished individual rights. With compelling real-world examples and penetrating legal analysis, Neily’s book shows how judicial abdication brought us to this point and calls for “judicial engagement” to restore courts as the critical check on the other branches of government envisioned by the Framers. Neily documents how courts have largely abandoned that vital role, and he offers a persuasive solution for the epidemic of judicial abdication: principled judicial engagement whereby judges actually judge in all constitutional cases, rather than reflexively taking the government’s side as they so often do now. Anyone concerned about the size of government, the sanctity of the Constitution, and the rule of law will find a refreshingly new perspective in this book written for non-lawyers and lawyers alike.

Download or read book The Power of Our Supreme Court written by Matt Beat and published by Mango Media. This book was released on 2023-06-20 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mr.Beat Connects the Supreme Court History Right to You! #1 Best Seller in Courts & Law Mr. Beat’s The Power of Our Supreme Court is the Supreme Court book of decisions that affect the everyday lives of Americans everywhere. The real democracy of America unveiled. What does the Supreme Court do? Sure, people care when the court makes a big ruling, but most don’t pay attention to the court’s day-to-day decisions. In this highly relevant law book, Mr. Beat takes you on a journey through our Supreme Court system, what it is, who is in it and how they got to be there, while foreshadowing how it shapes our very future. A tour of the most influential cases in history. Inspired by Mr. Beat’s court series, The Power of Our Supreme Court walks through many Supreme Court history cases from landmark cases to the more obscure. Matt Beat explains how each case affects us to this day in a way that is engaging, applicable, and easy to understand, even for beginners. Inside, you’ll find: Detailed explanations of the Supreme Court, how it works, and how it affects you A Supreme Court cases book perfect for anyone interested in social science, political science, activism, law, or current events Interesting visuals, charts, and graphs to help contextualize and breakdown the historical significance of big and small cases If you like courtroom books, legal books for lawyers, or books on politics like The Shadow Docket, How Civil Wars Start, The Color of Law, or The Flip Side of History, you’ll love Mr. Beat’s The Power of Our Supreme Court.

Download or read book Decision Making by the Modern Supreme Court written by Richard L. Pacelle, Jr and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-13 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are three general models of Supreme Court decision making: the legal model, the attitudinal model and the strategic model. But each is somewhat incomplete. This book advances an integrated model of Supreme Court decision making that incorporates variables from each of the three models. In examining the modern Supreme Court, since Brown v. Board of Education, the book argues that decisions are a function of the sincere preferences of the justices, the nature of precedent, and the development of the particular issue, as well as separation of powers and the potential constraints posed by the president and Congress. To test this model, the authors examine all full, signed civil liberties and economic cases decisions in the 1953–2000 period. Decision Making by the Modern Supreme Court argues, and the results confirm, that judicial decision making is more nuanced than the attitudinal or legal models have argued in the past.

Download or read book The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited written by Jeffrey A. Segal and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-09-16 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two leading scholars of the Supreme Court explain and predict its decision making.

Download or read book Reconsidering Judicial Finality written by Louis Fisher and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2019-08-16 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Federal judges, legal scholars, pundits, and reporters frequently describe the Supreme Court as the final word on the meaning of the Constitution. The historical record presents an entirely different picture. A close and revealing reading of that record, from 1789 to the present day, Reconsidering Judicial Finality reminds us of the “unalterable fact,” as Chief Justice Rehnquist once remarked, “that our judicial system, like the human beings who administer it, is fallible.” And a Court inevitably prone to miscalculation and error, as this book clearly demonstrates, cannot have the incontrovertible last word on constitutional questions. In this deeply researched, sharply reasoned work of legal myth-busting, constitutional scholar Louis Fisher explains how constitutional disputes are settled by all three branches of government, and by the general public, with the Supreme Court often playing a secondary role. The Court’s decisions have, of course, been challenged and reversed in numerous cases—involving slavery, civil rights, child labor legislation, Japanese internment during World War II, abortion, and religious liberty. What Fisher shows us on a case-by-case basis is how the elected branches, scholars, and American public regularly press policies contrary to Court rulings—and regularly prevail, although the process might sometimes take decades. From the common misreading of Marbury v. Madison, to the mistaken understanding of the Supreme Court as the trusted guardian of individual rights, to the questionable assumptions of the Court’s decision in Citizens United, Fisher’s work charts the distance and the difference between the Court as the ultimate arbiter in constitutional matters and the judgment of history. The verdict of Reconsidering Judicial Finality is clear: to treat the Supreme Court’s nine justices as democracy’s last hope or as dangerous activists undermining democracy is to vest them with undue significance. The Constitution belongs to all three branches of government—and, finally, to the American people.

Download or read book Power Constraint and Policy Change written by Robert M. Howard and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Power, Constraint, and Policy Change analyzes state court influence on state education finance reform. Beginning in the early 1970s litigants began filing suits in state courts to change state education funding in order to prevent disparities in education resources between wealthy and poor communities. These cases represent a fundamental policy debate in American society, pitting the importance of education against the cost and method of funding it. Through education finance, the authors explore how and why courts often end up determining and resolving policy funding debates. Education funding has involved both the federal constitution and state constitutions, as well as legislation and court-mandated remedies, which, ultimately, determine who and how we pay for this critical American value.

Download or read book The U S Supreme Court and the Judicial Review of Congress written by Linda Camp Keith and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2008 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines, from a behavioral perspective, the U.S. Supreme Court's exercise of the power of judicial review over Congress across two hundred years of the Court's history, testing the major competing theories in political science - the attitudinal model and the strategic approach - through systematic empirical analysis. Exploring the major trends in the Court's use of this power over time, the book examines a broad range of questions concerning the countermajoritarian nature of this power, and provides an analysis of each of the individual justices' behavior along several dimensions of the power, such as the use of judicial review to protect minority rights against majority intrusion. The book concludes that the Court has shown a high level of deference to Congress, with notable historic highs and lows, and generally that the exercise of the power has been less countermajoritarian than is usually assumed. Its analyses find the strongest level of support for the attitudinal approach to judicial decision making, but also concludes that strategic concerns cannot be dismissed, especially for the more recent Courts.