Judges on Trial : Law and Politics in the Life of Trial Judges
There is a wealth of scholarship examining how judicial attitudes affect appellate decision-making. Less attention, however, has been paid to the attitudes of trial judges. While there is some scholarship examining the objective actions of trial judges, there is very little examining how their subjective motivations affect their performance. Trial judges merit more attention because they are the best known and most accessible judges to the American people. Moreover, just as with appellate judges, more ethnographic research is needed to investigate the connections between attitudes and actions. Therefore, in this paper, I use qualitative interviews to investigate the motivations of five state and federal trial court judges. These interviews show how judgesメ perceptions of law and politics influence how they view their role as a judge. This alternative way of investigating trial court judicial decision-making reveals that, at least in the minds of trial judges, legal factors have greater influence than social or political ones. This exploratory study of judicial decision-making may generate interesting projects for future scholars. Specifically, it helps us understand how judges see law as a check on their personal and political motivations. Even in political cases, judges see themselves as good faith interpreters of law because of their sense of professional obligation and the influence of jurisprudential schools of thought, which they see as outweighing political ideology
Year of publication: |
2010
|
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Authors: | Fernandez, Amy |
Publisher: |
[2010]: [S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | Rechtsökonomik | Economic analysis of law | Rechtsprechung | Court decisions | Behinderte | Disabled persons | Rechtsberufe | Legal profession |
Description of contents: | Abstract [papers.ssrn.com] |
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