Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> American Government - Judicial Branch

Seven minutes after President Obama put his signature to a landmark national health care insurance program, a lawyer in the office of Florida GOP attorney general Bill McCollum hit a computer key, sparking a legal challenge to the new law that would eventually reach the nation's highest court. Health care is only the...

One of the more enduring topics of concern for empirically-oriented scholars of law and courts-and political scientists more generally-is how research can be more directly relevant to broader audiences outside of academia. A significant part of this issue goes back to a seeming disconnect between empirical and normative scholars of law and courts that has increased in recent years.

Brandon L. Bartels and Chris W. Bonneau argue that being attuned to the normative implications of one's work enhances the quality of empirical work, not to mention makes it substantially more...

The occurrence in some criminal cases of "cultural defenses" on behalf of "minority" defendants has stirred much debate. This book is the first to illuminate how "cultural evidence" - i.e., "evidence" regarding ethnicity - is actually negotiated by attorneys, expert/lay witnesses, and defendants in criminal trials. Caroline Braunmuhl demonstrates that this has occurred, overwhelmingly, in ways shaped by colonialist and patriarchal discourses common in the Western world. She argues that the controversy regarding the legitimacy of a "cultural defense" has tended to obscure this fact, and has...

The Court s decisions are interpreted and disseminated via the media. During this process, the media paints an image of the Court and its business. Like any artist, the media has license regarding what to cover and the amount of attention devoted to any aspect of the Court and its business. Some cases receive tremendous attention, while others languish on the back pages or are ignored. These selection effects create a skewed picture of the Court and its work, and might affect public attitudes toward the Court. Indeed, studies of media coverage of other governmental institutions reveal that...

Winner of the Henry Adams Prize from the Society for History in the Federal Government
A Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction
A Slate Best Book of 2014

The inside story of the Supreme Court decisions that brought true democracy to the United States

As chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Earl Warren is most often remembered for landmark rulings in favor of desegregation and the rights of the accused. But Warren himself identified a lesser known group of cases-Baker v. Carr, Reynolds v. Sims, and their companions-as his...

Leading authorities present the latest cutting edge research on state judicial elections. Starting with recent transformations in the electoral landscape, including those brought about by U.S. Supreme Court rulings, this volume provides penetrating analyses of partisan, nonpartisan, and retention elections to state supreme courts, intermediate appellate courts, and trial courts. Topics include citizen participation, electoral competition, fundraising and spending, judicial performance evaluations, reform efforts, attack campaigns, and other organized efforts to oust judges. This...

Leading authorities present the latest cutting edge research on state judicial elections. Starting with recent transformations in the electoral landscape, including those brought about by U.S. Supreme Court rulings, this volume provides penetrating analyses of partisan, nonpartisan, and retention elections to state supreme courts, intermediate appellate courts, and trial courts. Topics include citizen participation, electoral competition, fundraising and spending, judicial performance evaluations, reform efforts, attack campaigns, and other organized efforts to oust judges. This...