The puzzle of judicial behavior

by Lawrence Baum

From local trial courts to the United States Supreme Court, judges' decisions affect the fate of individual litigants and the fate of the nation as a whole. Scholars have long discussed and debated explanations of judicial behavior. With this book Lawrence Baum examines the major issues in the debates over how best to understand judicial behavior and assesses what we actually know about how judges decide cases. He concludes that we are far from understanding why judges choose the positions they take in court. This book will be of interest to political scientists and scholars in law and courts as well as attorneys interested in understanding judges as decision makers and seeking to understand what we can learn from scholarly research about judicial behavior.