The Study of Judicial Decision-Making as an Aspect of Political Behavior

In a recent essay, Richard Snyder has stated that: “[A] paradox in political science is the lack … of any systematic attention to the analysis of the decision-making behavior of judges.” It is not my purpose to argue either for or against the particular frame of reference for decision-making analysis advocated by Snyder. I do believe, however, that he has correctly identified the approach—the analysis of judicial decision-making as an aspect of political behavior—which is most likely to command the focus of interest and activity of the coming generation of political scientists whose substantive concern is with the study of political problems in the area of our discipline traditionally known as public law.The concept “political behavior” remains sufficiently novel within the public law fraternity to impose something of an obligation to make clear what I have in mind in using the term. I shall borrow from David B. Truman who, in a Brookings Lecture not long ago, defined the “behavioral sciences” as “those bodies of knowledge, in whatever academic department they may be found, that provide or aspire to provide ‘verified principles’ of human behavior through the use of methods of inquiry similar to those of the natural sciences.”