Courts and Judicial Policymaking

For courses in courts and the judicial process; and law and society. The scope of its coverage, and its high academic quality, makes it attractive for graduate courses as well.

Christopher P. Banks and David M. O'Brien wrote Courts and Judicial Policymaking to fill a need for a comprehensive textbook on law and judicial policymaking. The text provides a fresh perspective on the contemporary politics of law, courts, the legal profession, and judicial policymaking, often with an underlying comparative judicial process perspective. It covers four distinct areas: 1) What is law?; 2) How are courts organized and how do they work procedurally?; 3) What influences court access and, ultimately, judicial decision-making?; and, 4) How do courts make policy, and how is judicial authority constrained? It has relevant and contemporary analyses of literature from the political science and legal fields; and analyses from scholars who argue from the quantitative (attitudinal and strategic models) and the qualitative (new institutionalism) perspectives. It contains up-to-date charts and graphs on the organization of courts and trends in litigation, caseloads, and opinion writing, and it is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate classes.

Feedback includes:

“The book is extremely well written and organized, one of the smoothest textbooks I have read in terms of readability. The tables provided are a major selling point for the book – nicely summarize complex and often confusing materials." – Roger Handberg, University of Central Florida

“The best feature of this manuscript is its thorough coverage of the subject matter as well as the in-depth analysis of specific topics and questions addressed in the boxed material and sidebars. Adding a comparative dimension by looking at the judicial systems and procedures of other countries is also quite novel.” – Susan Mezey, Loyola University, Chicago