Courts and Social Policy
31 Pages Posted: 18 Oct 2017
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: Suggested Citation