Judging Law and Policy

To what extent do courts make social and public policy and influence policy change? This innovative text analyzes this question generally and in seven distinct policy areas that play out in both federal and state courts―tax policy, environmental policy, reproductive rights, sex equality, affirmative action, school finance, and same-sex marriage. The authors address these issues through the twin lenses of how state and federal courts must and do interact with the other branches of government and whether judicial policy-making is a form of activist judging. Each chapter uncovers the policymaking aspects of judicial process by investigating the current state of the law, the extent of court involvement in policy change, the responses of other governmental entities and outside actors, and the factors which influenced the degree of implementation and impact of the relevant court decisions. Throughout the book, Howard and Steigerwalt examine and analyze the literature on judicial policy-making as well as evaluate existing measures of judicial ideology, judicial activism, court and legal policy formation, policy change and policy impact. This unique text offers new insights and areas to research in this important field of American politics.

Howard, Robert M.

Steigerwalt, Amy

Rules & Procedures

Routledge

Gendered Vulnerability examines the factors that make women politicians more electorally vulnerable than their male counterparts. These factors combine to convince women that they must work harder to win elections—a phenomenon that Jeffrey Lazarus and Amy Steigerwalt term “gendered vulnerability.” Since women feel constant pressure to make sure they can win reelection, they devote more of their time and energy to winning their constituents’ favor. Lazarus and Steigerwalt examine different facets of legislative behavior, finding that female members do a better job of representing their constituents than male members.

Gendered Vulnerability: How Women Work Harder to Stay in Office (Legislative Politics And Policy Making)

Politics & Social Sciences

Lazarus, Jeffrey

Social Sciences

University of Michigan Press

Gendered Vulnerability examines the factors that make women politicians more electorally vulnerable than their male counterparts. These factors combine to convince women that they must work harder to win elections—a phenomenon that Jeffrey Lazarus and Amy Steigerwalt term “gendered vulnerability.” Since women feel constant pressure to make sure they can win reelection, they devote more of their time and energy to winning their constituents’ favor. Lazarus and Steigerwalt examine different facets of legislative behavior, finding that female members do a better job of representing their constituents than male members.

The U.S. Supreme Court typically rules on cases that present complex legal questions. Given the challenging nature of its cases and the popular view that the Court is divided along ideological lines, it's commonly assumed that the Court routinely hands down equally-divided decisions. Yet the justices actually issue unanimous decisions in approximately one third of the cases they decide. Drawing on data from the U.S. Supreme Court database, internal court documents, and the justices' private papers, The Puzzle of Unanimity provides the first comprehensive account of how the Court reaches consensus. Pamela Corley, Amy Steigerwalt, and Artemus Ward propose and empirically test a theory of consensus; they find consensus is a function of multiple, concurrently-operating forces that cannot be fully accounted for by ideological attitudes. In this thorough investigation, the authors conclude that consensus is a function of the level of legal certainty and its ability to constrain justices' ideological preferences.

The Puzzle of Unanimity: Consensus on the United States Supreme Court

Ward, Artemus

Corley, Pamela C.

Stanford Law Books

Who gets seated on the lower federal courts and why? Why are some nominees confirmed easily while others travel a long, hard road to confirmation? What role do senators and interest groups play in determining who will become a federal judge? The lower federal courts have increasingly become the final arbiters of the important political and social issues of the day. As a result, who gets seated on the bench has become a major political issue. In Battle over the Bench, Amy Steigerwalt argues that the key to understanding the dynamics of the lower court confirmation process is to examine the process itself. She offers a new analytic framework for understanding when nominations become contested, and shows when and how key actors can influence the fate of nominations and ultimately determine who will become a federal judge.
 Given the increasing salience of lower court decisions, it is not surprising that interest groups and partisan agendas play an important role. Steigerwalt inventories the means by which senators push through or block nominations, and why interest groups decide to support or oppose certain nominations. The politics of judicial confirmations do not end there, however. Steigerwalt also reveals how many nominees are blocked for private political reasons that have nothing to do with ideology, while senators may use their support for or opposition to nominees as bargaining chips to garner votes for their positions on unrelated issues. Battle over the Bench showcases the complex and, at times, hidden motivations driving the staffing of the federal bench.

Battle over the Bench: Senators, Interest Groups, and Lower Court Confirmations (Constitutionalism and Democracy)

Politics & Government

University of Virginia Press

When Dissents Matter: Judicial Dialogue through US Supreme Court Opinions (Constitutionalism and Democracy)

Legal History

<div> The ability of US Supreme Court justices to dissent from the majority, to formally register and explain their belief that a case has been wrongly decided, represents a time-honored tradition of perhaps the most august American institution. Yet the impact of these dissents, which allow justices to engage in a dialogue over law and policy, has seldom, if ever, been the focus of dedicated study. Analyzing the influence of past dissents on later Supreme Court majority opinions, this book presents the first comprehensive study of the effects of dissenting opinions and illuminates which types of dissents successfully influence legal and policy debates, which ones fail to make a difference, and why. Drawing on the private papers of the justices and original data, this book demonstrates that court majorities engage with dissents posing a particular threat to their opinions, and that they can be persuaded by thoughtful and careful dissenting arguments. </div>

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Steigerwalt, Amy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Steigerwalt, Amy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Steigerwalt, Amy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Judging Law and Policy

Gendered Vulnerability: How Women Work Harder to Stay in Office (Legislative Politics And Policy Making)

Gendered Vulnerability: How Women Work Harder to Stay in Office (Legislative Politics And Policy Making)

The Puzzle of Unanimity: Consensus on the United States Supreme Court

Battle over the Bench: Senators, Interest Groups, and Lower Court Confirmations (Constitutionalism and Democracy)

When Dissents Matter: Judicial Dialogue through US Supreme Court Opinions (Constitutionalism and Democracy)

When Dissents Matter: Judicial Dialogue through US Supreme Court Opinions (Constitutionalism and Democracy)