The View From The Bench And Chambers

For most of their history, the U.S. courts of appeals have toiled in obscurity, well out of the limelight of political controversy. But as the number of appeals has increased dramatically, while the number of cases heard by the Supreme Court has remained the same, the courts of appeals have become the court of last resort for the vast majority of litigants. This enhanced status has been recognized by important political actors, and as a result, appointments to the courts of appeals have become more and more contentious since the 1990s. This combination of increasing political salience and increasing political controversy has led to the rise of serious empirical studies of the role of the courts of appeals in our legal and political system. At once building on and contributing to this wave of scholarship, The View from the Bench and Chambers melds a series of quantitative analyses of judicial decisions with the perspectives gained from in-depth interviews with the judges and their law clerks. This multifaceted approach yields a level of insight beyond that provided by any previous work on appellate courts in the United States, making The View from the Bench and Chambers the most comprehensive and rich account of the operation of these courts to date.

Do our federal courts, including the Supreme Court, lead or merely implement public policy? This is a critical question in the study and practice of law, with a long history of continued dispute and contradictory evidence. In Lighting the Way, Douglas Rice systematically examines both sides of this debate. Introducing compelling new data on the policy focuses of federal courts, Rice presents the first long-term, comprehensive consideration of the judicial agenda. In doing so, he details the essential role of the Supreme Court and other federal courts in directing attention to issues in American politics through influential relationships with Congress, the presidency, and the public. The dynamics Rice illustrates grow from the strengths of political constituencies in various policy areas and the constitutional powers accorded to the courts. Lighting the Way provides strong evidence that, as long argued but never empirically demonstrated, the courts systematically lead the attention of other institutions on civil rights. The research speaks to a broad and growing literature in political science and sociolegal research on the interactive nature of policymaking and the critical role of legal institutions and social movements in shaping policy agendas.

Focusing on the behavioral aspects of disagreement within a panel and between the levels of the federal judicial hierarchy, the authors reveal the impact of individual attitudes or preferences on judicial decision-making, and hence on political divisions in the broader society.

'Experience of all sorts at the Bar and on the Bench has led to the thought that a few timely words could avoid a lot of grief as well as perhaps bringing a smile or two from the pictures.' At the Bar Nick Chambers did a great variety of cases ranging from the miners' respiratory claims to the Kuwait Airways litigation. On the Bench his job was to manage and try cases as the Mercantile Judge for Wales and Chester and then for Wales as well as sitting in London in the Commercial Court and other jurisdictions. He was a member of the Civil Procedure Rule Committee at the time of the introduction of the Woolf reforms. He now practices as an arbitrator and mediator from Brick Court Chambers. The Chambers family's involvement with watercolours goes back to 1779 with an ancestor's sketches during the Siege of Gibraltar. Since then each generation has made its own contribution including scenes from Mumbai in the V&A and the first illustrations of the rules of rugby football done at the school in 1845. Illustrations and texts from Nick's book Missed Moments in Legal History hang in the Rolls Building. The pictures in Case Handling pay a further happy tribute to his past. This book, with its pithy advice and attractive illustrations, makes taking the serious medicine of case handling a pleasure both for the recently qualified and anyone else with an interest in making dispute resolution work.

The famous judge of TV talks about his experiences on the bench and about the American judicial system.

In Governing from the Bench, Emmett Macfarlane draws on interviews with current and former justices, law clerks, and other staff members of the court to shed light on the institution’s internal environment and decision-making processes. He explores the complex role of the Supreme Court as an institution; exposes the rules, conventions, and norms that shape and constrain its justices’ behavior; and situates the court in its broader governmental and societal context, as it relates to the elected branches of government, the media, and the public.

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