Courts and Social Policy

31 Pages Posted: 18 Oct 2017

See all articles by Jeb Barnes

Jeb Barnes

University of Southern California - Department of Political Science

Date Written: August 18, 2017

Abstract

This article reviews the complex literature on the role of courts in social policy. It argues that there are three basic approaches to understanding the role of courts in social policy — gap studies, judicial mobilization studies and judicial feedback studies. Despite their differences, these different approaches converge on the idea that judicial policy-making looks a lot like other forms of policy-making. Identifying these parallels is a signature achievement, which has largely dispelled the “myth of rights” and has revealed the political and policy dimensions of ostensibly technical legal matters. Yet normalizing judicial policy-making — making it seem like other types of policy-making — threatens to render it a much less interesting subject to study. This suggests the time has come for law and policy scholars to return to core questions about what makes courts and judicial policy-making distinctive and study how these particular tilts and tendencies influence the policy-making processes.

Keywords: Courts, Litigation, Rights, Judicialization, Social Policy, Implementation, Mobilization, Policy Feedbacks

JEL Classification: Z18

Suggested Citation

Barnes, Jeb, Courts and Social Policy (August 18, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3054653 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3054653

Jeb Barnes (Contact Author)

University of Southern California - Department of Political Science ( email )

2250 Alcazar Street
Los Angeles, CA 90089
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
151
Abstract Views
899
Rank
350,945
PlumX Metrics