Vol. 5 No. 2 (February, 1995) pp. 33-35

COURTS IN AMERICAN POLITICS: READINGS AND INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS by Henry R. Glick (Editor). New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing, 1990. 405 pp. Paper $36.95.

Reviewed by Donald W. Crowley, Department of Political Science , University of Idaho

Determining how to expose undergraduate students to the wide variety of research in judicial politics without offending their pocket books can be problematic. This problem has been made worse by the limitations that some university libraries now apply to the use of copies placed on reserve. Those that diligently plan well ahead can put together their own reader tailored perfectly to their own needs. For those of us that seldom think far enough ahead to do this, the idea of a edited volume of essays can be quite attractive.

Henry Glick's COURTS IN AMERICAN POLITICS: READINGS AND INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS is a reader which provides a wide variety of essays covering the role of courts in American society. In Glick's words the collection of essays is designed to "portray courts as integral parts of politics and to make research about courts and the political process easily assessable to students." (Preface) The book is clearly intended for undergraduate courses in judicial politics or judicial process. While Glick's reader is not the only one available on the market it is one of only a few that provide reasonable coverage of the field. One former competitor, Goldman and Sarat's AMERICAN COURT SYSTEMS: READINGS IN JUDICIAL PROCESS AND BEHAVIOR (1989) is now out of print. Other possible competitors are Gates and Johnson's, THE AMERICAN COURTS: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT (1991), and Bonsignore et al. BEFORE THE LAW: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LEGAL PROCESS (1994). The cost of the three books range from $27.00 to $37.00 with the Bonsignore volume the least expensive and Glick's the most expensive.

Apart from cost, however, there are several reasons why the Glick reader might be the better choice for an undergraduate course in judicial politics. The Glick reader focuses specifically on empirical research related to courts and actors in the judicial system. The Bonsignore reader is a wide ranging collection of cases and essays that seek to explicate the role of law. Thus the Bonsignore reader, while a nice collection for a law & society course, contains a lot of materials that would not fit comfortably in most judicial politics courses. The Gates and Johnson book does fit the material of most judicial politics courses. It contains original review essays on the major issues addressed in a standard judicial politics course. Some of these essays are exceedingly good reflections on what political scientists know (and don't know) about courts in American Politics. The Gates & Johnson text is clearly a better review of the field for graduate students or scholars seeking general assessments of the state of our knowledge, but may not be as useful for undergraduate courses.

The Glick book consists of 47 edited articles organized into five parts and 13 chapters. Each chapter is prefaced by a short introduction seeking to place the readings of that chapter into proper perspective. These short introductions are nice additions but in my view are not enough to orient the typical

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undergraduate. This is, I suspect, why Glick suggests that the reader should be used along with a textbook in the field. The organization of the book generally follows a traditional systems approach. Thus Part I has essays on judicial organization, litigants, interest groups, the structure of the legal profession and the selection of judges. Part II contains articles on trial courts, both civil and criminal as well as a couple of articles on juries. A very short Part III contains a mere two articles on appellate courts. Perhaps this section is particularly brief because so much of Part IV also deals with decision making at the appellate level, but calling two articles a separate part of a book seems somewhat curious. Part IV focuses on behavioral studies of the factors that influence judicial decision making as well as a couple of articles on the "fluidity of choice". The articles in Part V turn to output issues looking at dimensions of policy making and the implementation of judicial decisions. The volume also contains a brief but useful appendix on the use of statistics in judicial studies.

The selections are well edited allowing students to get to the core of the issues raised in each article. One can, I suppose, always quibble with the choice of particular articles, but the selections chosen are indeed representative samples of the published work available on each topic. Perhaps it isn't a fair criticism, but it should be pointed out that many of these works are becoming dated. Glick's volume was published in 1990 but 75% of the articles were originally published in 1985 or earlier. My point isn't that students can't learn from older studies or even that we now know significantly different things about courts. Nevertheless, in certain chapters the material isn't fresh and certainly will need to be updated in class. To me this problem seemed particularly noticeable in the chapter on the structure of the legal profession and the chapter on negotiating civil suits. The chapter on civil suits includes part of Marc Galanter's essay written in 1986 questioning whether there really is a litigation explosion, but given the battles that are now brewing on tort reform it would be useful to have articles that clearly indicate the political context within which claims about too much litigation and excessive awards are taking place. Of course, a textbook or lecture material can update the information and provide the necessary context but students may well feel that some of these articles don't tell them much they need to know about these issues today.

Certainly most of the articles in the book raise questions that remain central to the study of courts and judicial decision making in American Politics. For instance, both Neal Tate's essay examining the extent to which the "personal attributes" of judges influence decision making and the essay by Larry Baum on "judicial values" help to demonstrate to students how political scientists have sought to explain influences on judicial behavior. Although even here, as Tate points out, we need to be careful not to assume that attribute models that seem explanatory for one period will explain much in another. James Gibson's article on role orientations as an intervening variable in decision making as well as Bradley Canon's on the dimensions of activism and restraint also help to illustrate the difficulties of determining what motivates judges to decide the way they do. Similarly, Donald Horowitz and Stephen Wasby offer differing conceptions on the dispute over

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judicial capacity which invites students to consider the continuing debate about the conditions under which courts can act effectively. Finally, all four essays on implementation should serve to illustrate to students the fallacy of assuming that Court decisions will necessarily have the intended results. In short, there is much here that students can learn from -- both substantively and methodologically in terms of what types of questions political scientists have asked and how we have gone about trying to answer them.

The strengths of Glick's volume are in its concise editing and coverage of a wide range materials that focus on courts. Still, there are areas that Glick avoids that other volumes have included. The Bonsignore collection as well as Sidney Ulmer's early 1980's volume COURTS, LAW, AND JUDICIAL PROCESS both contain readings on the role of police. Since I include the police in my judicial politics course, to me this is an unfortunate omission. The Gates and Johnson text as well as Goldman and Sarat's work both include chapters on courts and public opinion. Of greater importance, a longer introductory essay orienting the student to the field, perhaps along the lines of the second chapter in Harry Stumpf's AMERICAN JUDICIAL POLITICS would have been helpful. Still, no edited volume can reasonably be expected to include all of what any individual instructor wants to cover. When used in conjunction with a text, or other supplementary materials, the Glick book can certainly make a solid contribution to an undergraduate course in judicial politics. References:

Bonsignore, John, Ethan Katsh, Peter d'Errico, Ronald Pipkin, Stephen Arons and Janet Rifkin, eds. 1994. BEFORE THE LAW: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LEGAL PROCESS. Houghton Mifflin.

Gates, John, and Charles Johnson, eds. 1991. THE AMERICAN COURTS: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT. Congressional Quarterly Press.

Goldman, Sheldon, and Austin Sarat, eds. 1989. AMERICAN COURT SYSTEMS: READINGS IN JUDICIAL PROCESS AND BEHAVIOR. 2nd ed. Longman.

Murphy, Walter, and C. Herman Pritchett, eds. 1986. COURTS, JUDGES, AND POLITICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE JUDICIAL PROCESS. 4th ed. Random House.

Stumpf, Harry. 1988. AMERICAN JUDICIAL POLITICS. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.

Ulmer, S. Sidney, ed. 1981. COURTS, LAW, AND JUDICIAL PROCESS. The Free Press.