In the United States, federal judges occupy weighty positions. They interpret the Constitution, define people's rights and liberties, and apply laws and regulations to myriad cases. They also are older than ever. In 2023, the median age of a federal judge reached 70 for the first time. Nearly one-third of federal judges exceeded the age of 75. And ten percent were 85 years or older. The federal judiciary has become a graying judiciary. Recent advances in neuroscience show that cognitive ag...

United States Supreme Court justices make decisions that have a profound impact on American society. Empirical legal scholars have portrayed justices as either single-minded or strategic seekers of policy, and there is little room in these theories for things like law, reputation, or personality. This book offers a fresh perspective that will jar Supreme Court scholarship out of complacency. It argues that justices' personalities influence their behavior, which in turn influences legal dev...

This book is the first study specifically to investigate the extent to which US Supreme Court justices alter the clarity of their opinions based on expected reactions from their audiences. The authors examine this dynamic by creating a unique measure of opinion clarity and then testing whether the Court writes clearer opinions when it faces ideologically hostile and ideologically scattered lower federal courts; when it decides cases involving poorly performing federal agencies; when it dec...

The U.S. Supreme Court, with its controlled, highly institutionalized decision-making practices, provides an ideal environment for studying coalition formation. The process begins during the oral argument stage, which provides the justices with their first opportunity to hear one another's attitudes and concerns specific to a case. This information gathering allows them eventually to form a coalition.In order to uncover the workings of this process, the authors analyze oral argumen...

The controversial book linking intelligence to class and race in modern society, and what public policy can do to mitigate socioeconomic differences in IQ, birth rate, crime, fertility, welfare, and poverty.

The charges of white privilege and systemic racism that are tearing the country apart fIoat free of reality. Two known facts, long since documented beyond reasonable doubt, need to be brought into the open and incorporated into the way we think about public policy: American whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians have different violent crime rates and different means and distributions of cognitive ability. The allegations of racism in policing, college admissions, segregation in housing, and...

An in-depth analysis of the legal entry points and remedies in the school-to-prison pipelineThe “school-to-prison pipeline” is an emerging trend that pushes large numbers of at-risk youth—particularly children of color—out of classrooms and into the juvenile justice system. The policies and practices that contribute to this trend can be seen as a pipeline with many entry points, from under-resourced K-12 public schools, to the over-use of zero-tolerance suspensions...

Anti-intellectualism has long been a powerful force in American political life. It has also regularly been the subject of both scholarly and public interest. In Anti-Scientific Americans, Matthew Motta revives Richard Hofstadter's pioneering insights from the 1960s on the subject and offers new theoretical and data-driven insights into the prevalence, origins, and policy consequences of anti-intellectualism in the US. He begins by conceptualizing anti-intellectualism as the dislik...

The Individualized Education Program (IEP), Mediation, Due Process, Fees and Expenses, and Other Remedies are covered in lay terms, making it easy for parents to understand what is happening, but there is sufficient detail and case law to make this an excellent resource for practicing attorneys.This book gives a brief summary of the history of special education law, which helps the reader understand a little bit about how we end up with the process we have today.

For civil rights lawyers who toiled through the 1980s in the increasingly barren fields of race and sex discrimination law, the approval of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 by a nearly unanimous U.S. House and Senate and a Republican President seemed almost fantastic. Within five years of the Act's effective date, however, observers were warning of an unfolding assault on the ADA by federal judges, the media, and other national opinion-makers. A year after the Supreme Court issu...

Innovations in Child and Family Policy tackles many of the common problems and challenges that are considered to be at the heart of child and family policy: family creation, economic support, childrearing, and family care-giving. Innovations begins by defining child and family policy and discussing the history of this growing specialization within the social sciences. The main chapters of Innovations address policy and programmatic solutions to problems that face...

“For the first time, this book tells the stories of the families who set key precedents for children with special needs. It also gives a novel and in-depth description of the political and legislative process of the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. In so doing, Colker offers an unprecedented historical account of this law, while also offering a timely critique and suggestions for reform.” —Julie K. Waterstone, Southwestern Law School