The Courts and Social Policy

The Courts and Social Policy
Author: Donald L. Horowitz
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2010-12-10
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780815707318

In recent years, the power of American judges to make social policy has been significantly broadened. The courts have reached into many matters once thought to be beyond the customary scope of judicial decisionmaking: education and employment policy, environmental issues, prison and hospital management, and welfare administration—to name a few. This new judicial activity can be traced to various sources, among them the emergence of public interest law firms and interest groups committed to social change through the courts, and to various changes in the law itself that have made access to the courts easier. The propensity for bringing difficult social questions to the judiciary for resolution is likely to persist. This book is the first comprehensive study of the capacity of courts to make and implement social policy. Donald L. Horowitz, a lawyer and social scientist, traces the imprint of the judicial process on the policies that emerge from it. He focuses on a number of important questions: how issues emerge in litigation, how courts obtain their information, how judges use social science data, how legal solutions to social problems are devised, and what happens to judge-made social policy after decrees leave the court house. After a general analysis of the adjudication process as it bears on social policymaking, the author presents four cases studies of litigation involving urban affairs, educational resources, juvenile courts and delinquency, and policy behavior. In each, the assumption and evidence with which the courts approached their policy problems are matched against data about the social settings from which the cases arose and the effects the decrees had. The concern throughout the book is to relate the policy process to the policy outcome. From his analysis of adjudication and the findings of his case studies the author concludes that the resources of the courts are not adequate to the new challenges confronting them. He suggests

The Hollow Hope

The Hollow Hope
Author: Gerald N. Rosenberg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 541
Release: 2008-09-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0226726681

In follow-up studies, dozens of reviews, and even a book of essays evaluating his conclusions, Gerald Rosenberg’s critics—not to mention his supporters—have spent nearly two decades debating the arguments he first put forward in The Hollow Hope. With this substantially expanded second edition of his landmark work, Rosenberg himself steps back into the fray, responding to criticism and adding chapters on the same-sex marriage battle that ask anew whether courts can spur political and social reform. Finding that the answer is still a resounding no, Rosenberg reaffirms his powerful contention that it’s nearly impossible to generate significant reforms through litigation. The reason? American courts are ineffective and relatively weak—far from the uniquely powerful sources for change they’re often portrayed as. Rosenberg supports this claim by documenting the direct and secondary effects of key court decisions—particularly Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade. He reveals, for example, that Congress, the White House, and a determined civil rights movement did far more than Brown to advance desegregation, while pro-choice activists invested too much in Roe at the expense of political mobilization. Further illuminating these cases, as well as the ongoing fight for same-sex marriage rights, Rosenberg also marshals impressive evidence to overturn the common assumption that even unsuccessful litigation can advance a cause by raising its profile. Directly addressing its critics in a new conclusion, The Hollow Hope, Second Edition promises to reignite for a new generation the national debate it sparked seventeen years ago.

The Courts and Social Policy

The Courts and Social Policy
Author: Donald L. Horowitz
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2010-12-10
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780815707318

In recent years, the power of American judges to make social policy has been significantly broadened. The courts have reached into many matters once thought to be beyond the customary scope of judicial decisionmaking: education and employment policy, environmental issues, prison and hospital management, and welfare administration—to name a few. This new judicial activity can be traced to various sources, among them the emergence of public interest law firms and interest groups committed to social change through the courts, and to various changes in the law itself that have made access to the courts easier. The propensity for bringing difficult social questions to the judiciary for resolution is likely to persist. This book is the first comprehensive study of the capacity of courts to make and implement social policy. Donald L. Horowitz, a lawyer and social scientist, traces the imprint of the judicial process on the policies that emerge from it. He focuses on a number of important questions: how issues emerge in litigation, how courts obtain their information, how judges use social science data, how legal solutions to social problems are devised, and what happens to judge-made social policy after decrees leave the court house. After a general analysis of the adjudication process as it bears on social policymaking, the author presents four cases studies of litigation involving urban affairs, educational resources, juvenile courts and delinquency, and policy behavior. In each, the assumption and evidence with which the courts approached their policy problems are matched against data about the social settings from which the cases arose and the effects the decrees had. The concern throughout the book is to relate the policy process to the policy outcome. From his analysis of adjudication and the findings of his case studies the author concludes that the resources of the courts are not adequate to the new challenges confronting them. He suggests

Courting Social Justice

Courting Social Justice
Author: Varun Gauri
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2010-03-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780521145169

This book is a first-of-its-kind, five-country empirical study of the causes and consequences of social and economic rights litigation. Detailed studies of Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and South Africa present systematic and nuanced accounts of court activity on social and economic rights in each country. The book develops new methodologies for analyzing the sources of and variation in social and economic rights litigation, explains why actors are now turning to the courts to enforce social and economic rights, measures the aggregate impact of litigation in each country, and assesses the relevance of the empirical findings for legal theory. This book argues that courts can advance social and economic rights under the right conditions precisely because they are never fully independent of political pressures.

Social Policy and Social Justice

Social Policy and Social Justice
Author: Michael Reisch
Publisher: Cognella Academic Publishing
Total Pages:
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre:
ISBN: 9781516592661

Providing the breadth of a standard text and the depth of a contributed volume, Social Policy and Social Justice: Meeting the Challenges of a Diverse Society is built on a clear, conceptual social justice framework and provides up-to-date analyses of contemporary social policy issues, written by experts in their particular areas of research and practice. The book uses case studies and rigorous analysis to explore the relationship of social policy to economic, social, and culture transformation and the ongoing conflict between universal and population-specific conceptions of social welfare. The third edition addresses recent dramatic changes in social policy. It includes an assessment of policies adopted by the Obama administration, policy changes proposed and implemented by the Trump administration and Congress related to the country's social welfare system, and the effects of the Trump administration's immigration and criminal justice policies on communities of color. The #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, recent changes in the electoral landscape, and timely Supreme Court decisions are also addressed. Additionally, the text considers the future of Social Security and Medicare, employment policies, health and mental health policies, and more. Throughout, the text explores the impact of economic and social changes on conceptions of need and helping, the role of social policies and social services in promoting or preventing social and political change, and the ways in which cultural, racial, ethnic, gender, and religious identity affect the development and implementation of social policies. Social Policy and Social Justice is ideal for undergraduate and graduate social work courses, as well as classes in cognate fields such as nursing, public policy, and political science. For a look at the specific features and benefits of Social Policy and Social Justice, visit cognella.com/social-policy-and-social-justice-features-and-benefits.

The Judicial System

The Judicial System
Author: Carlo Guarnieri
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2020-05-29
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1839100362

This timely book explores the expansion of the role of judges and courts in the political system and the mixed reactions generated by these developments. In this comprehensive book, Carlo Guarnieri and Patrizia Pederzoli draw on a wealth of experience in teaching and research in the field, moving beyond traditional legal analysis and providing a clear, concise and all-encompassing introduction to the phenomenon of the administration of justice and all of its traits.

Weak Courts, Strong Rights

Weak Courts, Strong Rights
Author: Mark Tushnet
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2009-07-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400828155

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.

Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State

Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State
Author: Malcolm M. Feeley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2000-03-28
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780521777346

Investigates the role of federal judges in prison reform, and policy making in general.

Judging Inequality

Judging Inequality
Author: James L. Gibson
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2021-08-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 161044907X

Social scientists have convincingly documented soaring levels of political, legal, economic, and social inequality in the United States. Missing from this picture of rampant inequality, however, is any attention to the significant role of state law and courts in establishing policies that either ameliorate or exacerbate inequality. In Judging Inequality, political scientists James L. Gibson and Michael J. Nelson demonstrate the influential role of the fifty state supreme courts in shaping the widespread inequalities that define America today, focusing on court-made public policy on issues ranging from educational equity and adequacy to LGBT rights to access to justice to worker’s rights. Drawing on an analysis of an original database of nearly 6,000 decisions made by over 900 judges on 50 state supreme courts over a quarter century, Judging Inequality documents two ways that state high courts have crafted policies relevant to inequality: through substantive policy decisions that fail to advance equality and by rulings favoring more privileged litigants (typically known as “upperdogs”). The authors discover that whether court-sanctioned policies lead to greater or lesser inequality depends on the ideologies of the justices serving on these high benches, the policy preferences of their constituents (the people of their state), and the institutional structures that determine who becomes a judge as well as who decides whether those individuals remain in office. Gibson and Nelson decisively reject the conventional theory that state supreme courts tend to protect underdog litigants from the wrath of majorities. Instead, the authors demonstrate that the ideological compositions of state supreme courts most often mirror the dominant political coalition in their state at a given point in time. As a result, state supreme courts are unlikely to stand as an independent force against the rise of inequality in the United States, instead making decisions compatible with the preferences of political elites already in power. At least at the state high court level, the myth of judicial independence truly is a myth. Judging Inequality offers a comprehensive examination of the powerful role that state supreme courts play in shaping public policies pertinent to inequality. This volume is a landmark contribution to scholarly work on the intersection of American jurisprudence and inequality, one that essentially rewrites the “conventional wisdom” on the role of courts in America’s democracy.

The Role of Law in Social Work Practice and Administration

The Role of Law in Social Work Practice and Administration
Author: Theodore J. Stein
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2004-07-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0231126484

This book addresses this relationship between the professions of social work and law and helps social workers develop the knowledge necessary to practice in a legal environment. The author focuses on how the law affects the day-to-day practice of social work; the creation, administration, and operation of social service agencies; and the ways in which social workers and attorneys collaborate to serve the public.