Judging and the Judicial Process

Catalog description

Focuses on courts as institutions and on judges as the primary actors within those institutions. Anticipated topics include judicial selection; judicial ethics; the concepts of judicial independence and accountability and their relationship to one another; the meaningfulness of notions such as judicial activism and judicial inactivism; judicial decision making (both as reported by judges and as analyzed by political scientists, psychologists, and other outsiders); the purpose and appropriateness of specialized courts; managerial or bureaucratic judging; a smattering of jurisprudence; and consideration of how all of these things are affected by changes in the nature and number of cases coming before the courts. Satisfies the Law School perspectives requirement.