Judicial Reputation

In "Judicial Reputation: A Comparative Theory, "Tom Ginsburg and Nuno Garoupa mean to explain how judges respond to the reputational incentives provided by the different audiences they interact with--lawyers and law professors; politicians; the media; and the public itself--as well as how legal systems design their judicial institutions to calibrate the locally appropriate balance among audiences. Making use by turns of careful empirical work and penetrating conceptual insights, Ginsburg and Garoupa argue that any given judicial structure is best understood not through the lens of legal culture, origin, or tradition, but through the economics of information and reputation.

The process by which Supreme Court judges are appointed is traditionally a quiet affair, but this certainly wasn’t the case when Prime Minister Stephen Harper selected Justice Marc Nadon – a federal court judge – for appointment to Canada’s highest court. Here, for the first time, is the complete story of “the Nadon Reference” – one of the strangest sagas in Canadian legal history. The Tenth Justice offers a detailed analysis of the background, issues surrounding, and legacy of the Reference re Supreme Court Act, ss 5 and 6.

This book investigates judicial deference to the administration in judicial review, a concept and legal practice that can be found to a greater or lesser degree in every constitutional system. In each system, deference functions differently, because the positioning of the judiciary with regard to the separation of powers, the role of the courts as a mechanism of checks and balances, and the scope of judicial review differ. In addition, the way deference works within the constitutional system itself is complex, multi-faceted and often covert. Although judicial deference to the administration is a topical theme in comparative administrative law, a general examination of national systems is still lacking. As such, a theoretical and empirical review is called for. Accordingly, this book presents national reports from 15 jurisdictions, ranging from Argentina, Canada and the US, to the EU. Constituting the outcome of the 20th General Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law, held in Fukuoka, Japan in July 2018, it offers a valuable and unique resource for the study of comparative administrative law.

What makes a great judge? How are reputations forged? Why do some reputations endure, while others crumble? And how can we know whether a reputation is fairly deserved? In this ambitious book, Richard Posner confronts these questions in the case of Benjamin Cardozo. The result is both a revealing portrait of one of the most influential legal minds of our century and a model for a new kind of study—a balanced, objective, critical assessment of a judicial career. "The present compact and unflaggingly interesting volume . . . is a full-bodied scholarly biography. . . .It is illuminating in itself, and will serve as a significant contribution."—Paul A. Freund, New York Times Book Review

Constitutional courts around the world play an increasingly central role in day-to-day democratic governance. Yet scholars have only recently begun to develop the interdisciplinary analysis needed to understand this shift in the relationship of constitutional law to politics. This edited volume brings together leading scholars of constitutional law and politics to provide a comprehensive overview of judicial review, covering theories of its creation, mechanisms of its constraint, and its comparative applications, including theories of interpretation and doctrinal developments. This book serves as a single point of entry for legal scholars and practitioners interested in understanding the field of comparative judicial review in its broader political and social context. This book's comparative and interdisciplinary accounts of a phenomenon of worldwide significance and its advanced introduction to the origins, functions, and contours of judicial review make it both accessible and indispensable. Comparative Judicial Review should be considered essential reading for every graduate student, early career scholar, and constitutional law professor seeking to become more comparative in their approach. Contributors include: K.J. Alter, S.G. Calabresi, W.-C. Chang, E.F. Delaney, R. Dixon, L, Esptein, T. Ginsburg, J. Greene, A. Harel, R. Hirschl, S. Issacharoff, V. Jackson, T. Jacobi, R.A. Kagan, D. Kapiszewski, J. Knight, D. Landau, Y.-L. Lee, H. Lerner, S. Mittal, T. Roux, W. Sadurski, A. Shinar, G. Silverstein, K. Stilt, Y. Tew, M. Versteeg, S. Waheedi, B.R. Weingast, E. Zackin

Unlike many other countries, the United States has few constitutional guarantees of social welfare rights such as income, housing, or healthcare. In part this is because many Americans believe that the courts cannot possibly enforce such guarantees. However, recent innovations in constitutional design in other countries suggest that such rights can be judicially enforced--not by increasing the power of the courts but by decreasing it. In Weak Courts, Strong Rights, Mark Tushnet uses a comparative legal perspective to show how creating weaker forms of judicial review may actually allow for stronger social welfare rights under American constitutional law. Under "strong-form" judicial review, as in the United States, judicial interpretations of the constitution are binding on other branches of government. In contrast, "weak-form" review allows the legislature and executive to reject constitutional rulings by the judiciary--as long as they do so publicly. Tushnet describes how weak-form review works in Great Britain and Canada and discusses the extent to which legislatures can be expected to enforce constitutional norms on their own. With that background, he turns to social welfare rights, explaining the connection between the "state action" or "horizontal effect" doctrine and the enforcement of social welfare rights. Tushnet then draws together the analysis of weak-form review and that of social welfare rights, explaining how weak-form review could be used to enforce those rights. He demonstrates that there is a clear judicial path--not an insurmountable judicial hurdle--to better enforcement of constitutional social welfare rights.