IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v62y1968i01p43-56_11.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the Fluidity of Judicial Choice

Author

Listed:
  • Howard, J. Woodford

Abstract

Within the past decade, a significant change has occurred in political science literature about the judiciary. The central questions have shifted from public law concerns—what is the law and its value?—to a primary focus on decision-making and process—how and why courts decide what they do, and with what political effects? The Supreme Court still dominates professional attention, but a host of new research techniques (jurimetrics and socialization studies, content and capability analysis, small group theory, etc.) vie for the allegiance of researchers.1 The variety of methods in vogue is formidable, and a testament to the borrowing power of the profession. So has been the sound and fury accompanying the change. The new approaches are perhaps too young to attempt a synthesis with traditional methods of analysis or even among themselves. Yet it is never too early to locate unities of inquiry, including common problems. The object of this essay is to air one difficulty facing virtually every student of the judicial process—the fluidity of judicial choice—and to examine some of its implications for research in and normative evaluation of judicial behavior. The general argument should be stated at the outset. My purpose is to present empirical findings as a basis to critique some current research techniques in hopes of contributing to the analytical synthesis which must come if the discipline is to make a concerted advance in understanding judicial behavior. From a research standpoint, an unfortunate by-product of the debate between the “quantifiers” and the “qualifiers,” as Joseph Tanenhaus has distinguished them, is that extremes of advocacy have obscured the much more important things that students of the judiciary share in common than the methodological differences which agitate them.

Suggested Citation

  • Howard, J. Woodford, 1968. "On the Fluidity of Judicial Choice," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(1), pages 43-56, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:62:y:1968:i:01:p:43-56_11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400115631/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Udi Sommer, 2011. "How rational are justices on the Supreme Court of the United States? Doctrinal considerations during agenda setting," Rationality and Society, , vol. 23(4), pages 452-477, November.
    2. Saul Brenner & Robert H. Dorff, 1992. "The Attitudinal Model and Fluidity Voting on the United States Supreme Court," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 4(2), pages 195-205, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:62:y:1968:i:01:p:43-56_11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.