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 t...

Once largely ignored, judicial elections in the states have become increasingly controversial over the past two decades. Legal organizations, prominent law professors, and a retired Supreme Court justice have advocated the elimination of elections as a means to choose judges. One of their primary concerns is interest group involvement in elections to state supreme courts, which they see as having negative effects on both the courts themselves and public perceptions of these judicial bodies...

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 Cou...

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 cour...

In The Supreme Court, Lawrence Baum provides a brief yet comprehensive introduction to the U.S. Supreme Court, one that is balanced and illuminating. In successive chapters, the book examines each major aspect of the Court: the selection, backgrounds, and departures of justices; the creation of the Court′s agenda; the decision-making process and the factors that shape the Court′s decisions; the substance of the Court′s policies; and the Court′s impact on governmen...

Are Supreme Court justices swayed by the political environment that surrounds them? Most people think "yes," and they point to the influence of the general public and the other branches of government on the Court. It is not that simple, however. As the eminent law and politics scholars Neal Devins and Lawrence Baum show in The Company They Keep, justices today are reacting far more to subtle social forces in their own elite legal world than to pressure from the other branches of g...

The functioning of the U.S. government is a bit messier than Americans would like to think. The general understanding of policymaking has Congress making the laws, executive agencies implementing them, and the courts applying the laws as written—as long as those laws are constitutional. Making Policy, Making Law fundamentally challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that no dominant institution—or even a roughly consistent pattern of relationships—exists among the various players in th...

Should the Supreme Court have the last word when it comes to interpreting the Constitution? The justices on the Supreme Court certainly seem to think so--and their critics say that this position threatens democracy. But Keith Whittington argues that the Court's justices have not simply seized power and circumvented politics. The justices have had power thrust upon them--by politicians, for the benefit of politicians. In this sweeping political history of judicial supremacy in America, Whit...

The Constitution was designed to limit government power and protect individuals from the tyranny of majorities and interest-group politics. But those protections are meaningless without judges who are fully committed to enforcing them, and America’s judges have largely abdicated that responsibility. All too often, instead of judging the constitutionality of government action, courts simply rationalize it, as the Supreme Court did in upholding the Affordable Care Act, which represented the ...

This "important and timely discussion of judicial politics" sheds light on America's courts as they rule on abortion, gay rights, gun rights, and more ( Choice).When the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, some saw the decision as a textbook example of neutral judicial decision making, noting that a Republican Chief Justice joined the Court's Democratic appointees in their vote. Others decried the decision as an example of partisan justice citing...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER“Do you want to know why today’s Supreme Court rules like it does? Leah Litman has the answer, and it is one that people should know. It’s time to read this book!” —Los Angeles Review of Books“Leah Litman’s work leaves you fired up yet empowered to pay attention, ready to resist, and, frankly, hotter.” —Jonathan Van NessCrooked Media podcast host Leah Litman shines...

A rallying cry for a more just approach to the law that bolsters social justice movements by throwing out originalism—the theory that judges should interpret the Constitution exactly as conservatives say the Founders meant it“The greatest trick conservatives ever pulled was convincing the world that originalism exists. This book is vital for understanding why the world sucks right now.”—Elie Mystal, author of Allow Me to RetortTher...