Product Description: On the eve of a presidential election that may determine the makeup of Supreme Court justices for decades to come, prominent attorney James D. Zirin argues that the Court has become increasingly partisan, rapidly making policy choices right and left on bases that have nothing to do with law or the Constitution...read more

Examines and measures the extent to which statutory language affects judicial behavior.How does the language of legislative statutes affect judicial behavior? Scholars of the judiciary have rarely studied this question despite statutes being, theoretically, the primary opportunity for legislatures to ensure that those individuals who interpret the law will follow their preferences. In Checking the Courts, Kirk A. Randazzo and Richard W. Waterman offer a model that integrates ideological and legal factors through an empirical measure of statutory discretion. The model is tested across multiple judicial institutions, at both the federal and state levels, and reveals that judges are influenced by the levels of discretion afforded in the legislative statutes. In those cases where lawmakers have clear policy preferences, legislation encourages judges to strictly interpret the plain meaning of the law. Conversely, if policy preferences are unclear, legislation leaves open the possibility that judges will make decisions based on their own ideological policy preferences. Checking the Courts thus provides us with a better understanding of the dynamic interplay between law and ideology.

Product Description: A comprehensive and focused review of all of the Supreme Court's overturns of Congress on constitutional grounds from 1789 to the present suited to college-level political science and constitutional law courses as well as law school students...read more

Product Description: The U.S. Supreme Court is not a unitary actor and it does not function in a vacuum. It is part of an integrated political system in which its decisions and doctrine must be viewed in a broader context. In some areas, the Court is the lead policy maker...read more

Examines the Supreme Court and its practices in areas including appointments, presidential politicking, and Court decision-making

Product Description: Much research is devoted to the decision-making power and precedent set by the Supreme Court. Less attention, however, is given to the strategic behavior during case selection. This book argues that case selection is done strategically, and by means of various criteria - influencing its constitutional position and importance...read more

Examines the Supreme Court and its practices in areas including appointments, presidential politicking, and Court decision-making

Product Description: President George W. Bush nominated Leslie H. Southwick in 2007 to the federal appeals court, Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans. Initially, Southwick seemed a consensus nominee. Just days before his hearing, though, a progressive advocacy group distributed the results of research it had conducted on opinions of the state court on which he had served for twelve years...read more

Product Description: In this concise, timely book, constitutional law expert Stephen M. Feldman draws on neoconservative writings to explore the rise of the neocons and their influence on the Supreme Court. Neocons burst onto the political scene in the early 1980s via their assault on pluralist democracy’s ethical relativism, where no pre-existing or higher principles limit the agendas of interest groups...read more

Product Description: This title explores and analyses the dynamic alliances and tensions between the nation's chief executive and the Supreme Court over time. Through primary source and other documents and insightful narratives, it discusses appointments, prerogative governance, and the role of time and regimes in the complex scheme of checks and balances...read more

Product Description: Ruggiero provides a systematic evaluation of the 'interdependent nature' of judicial power within three federal systems. She seeks to answer the question: Why are some high courts more powerful than others? By integrating strategic assumptions about the behavior of courts and other political actors and by employing a comparative, historical analysis of court policy-making and legislative responses to said policy-making, Ruggiero tests and refines concepts of court influence as 'interdependent'...read more