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The Indian Supreme Court, the South African Constitutional Court and the Colombian Constitutional Court have been among the most important and creative courts in the Global South. In Asia, Africa and Latin America, they are seen as activist tribunals that have contributed (or attempted to contribute) to the structural transformation of the public and private spheres of their countries. The cases issued by these courts are creating a constitutionalism of the Global South. This book addresses in a direct and detailed way the jurisprudence of these Courts on three key topics: access to justice, cultural diversity and socioeconomic rights. This volume is a valuable contribution to the discussion about the contours and structure of contemporary constitutionalism. It makes explicit that this discussion has interlocutors both in the Global South and Global North while showing the common discourse between them and the differences on how they interpret and solve key constitutional problems.

Based on fieldwork in Argentina and Brazil, this study identifies striking cross-national variation in inter-branch interactions over economic governance. Diana Kapiszewski argues that the high courts' contrasting characters - political in Argentina and statesman-like in Brazil - shape their decisions on controversial cases and condition how elected leaders respond to their rulings, channeling inter-branch interactions into persistent patterns.

From local trial courts to the United States Supreme Court, judges' decisions affect the fates of individual litigants and the fate of the nation as a whole. Scholars have long discussed and debated explanations of judicial behavior. This book examines the major issues in the debates over how best to understand judicial behavior and assesses what we actually know about how judges decide cases. It concludes that we are far from understanding why judges choose the positions they take in court. Lawrence Baum considers three issues in examining judicial behavior. First, the author considers the balance between the judges' interest in the outcome of particular cases and their interest in other goals such as personal popularity and lighter workloads. Second, Baum considers the relative importance of good law and good policy as bases for judges' choices. Finally Baum looks at the extent to which judges act strategically, choosing their own positions after taking into account the positions that their fellow judges and other policy makers might adopt. Baum argues that the evidence on each of these issues is inconclusive and that there remains considerable room for debate about the sources of judges' decisions. Baum concludes that this lack of resolution is not the result of weaknesses in the scholarship but from the difficulty in explaining human behavior. He makes a plea for diversity in research. This book will be of interest to political scientists and scholars in law and courts as well as attorneys who are interested in understanding judges as decision makers and who want to understand what we can learn from scholarly research about judicial behavior. Lawrence Baum is Professor of Political Science, Ohio State University.

The authors use confidential interviews with Supreme Court justices, analysis of their rulings from 1970 to 2005, and measures that tap their perceived ideological tendencies to provide a critical examination of the ideological roots of judicial decision making, uncovering the complexity of contemporary judicial behaviour. Examining judicial behaviour through the lens of three different research strategies grounded in qualitative and quantitative methodologies, Law, Ideology, and Collegiality presents compelling evidence that political ideology is a key factor in decision making and a prominent source of conflict in the Supreme Court of Canada.

Alec Stone Sweet is one of the world's foremost social scientists and legal scholars. In this book, he examines the evolution of the European Union since 1959. After developing and testing a theory of integration, he then assesses the impact of the European Court of Justice on the politics of trade, sex equality, and environmental protection in the EU.

In this interdisciplinary book in an interdisciplinary series, Dave Bridge crosses methodological boundaries to offer readers insights on the political \"push­back\" that historically follows Supreme Court rulings with which most Americans disagree. After developing a framework for identifying the Court's rare countermajor­itarian decisions, Bridge shows how those decisions that liberals backed in the 1950s through the 1970s consistently upset con­servative factions in the Democratic Party, which always managed to weather the storms—that is until Roe v. Wade in 1973. In Pushback, Bridge offers compelling hy­potheses about how the two major parties can use unpopular Supreme Court rulings to shift the political momentum and win elections. He then puts those hypotheses to the test, analyzing the political fallout of recent rulings on controversial issues such as Obamacare, same-sex marriage, and religious liberty. Certain to appeal to anyone interested in American political science and history, Pushback closes with a detailed exami­nation of the unequivocally counterma­joritarian Supreme Court ruling of our lifetimes, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe. For the first time in 50 years, conditions are ripe for a party to win votes by campaign­ing against the will of the Court. Upcom­ing elections will tell if the Republicans overplayed their hand, or if Democrats will play theirs as skillfully as did the GOP after Roe.

How do Supreme Court justices decide their cases? Do they follow their policy preferences? Or are they constrained by the law and by other political actors? The Constrained Court combines new theoretical insights and extensive data analysis to show that law and politics together shape the behavior of justices on the Supreme Court. Michael Bailey and Forrest Maltzman show how two types of constraints have influenced the decision making of the modern Court. First, Bailey and Maltzman document that important legal doctrines, such as respect for precedents, have influenced every justice since 1950. The authors find considerable variation in how these doctrines affect each justice, variation due in part to the differing experiences justices have brought to the bench. Second, Bailey and Maltzman show that justices are constrained by political factors. Justices are not isolated from what happens in the legislative and executive branches, and instead respond in predictable ways to changes in the preferences of Congress and the president. The Constrained Court shatters the myth that justices are unconstrained actors who pursue their personal policy preferences at all costs. By showing how law and politics interact in the construction of American law, this book sheds new light on the unique role that the Supreme Court plays in the constitutional order.

Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of Harry S. Truman's presidency is his judicial legacy, with even the finest of Truman biographies neglecting to consider the influence he had on the Supreme Court. Yet, as Rawn James lays out in engaging detail, president Harry Truman successfully molded the high court into a judicial body that appeared to actively support his administration's political agenda. In rulings that sparked controversy in their own time, the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld Truman's most contentious policies, including actions to restrict free speech, expand civil rights, and manage labor union unrest. The Truman Court: Law and the Limits of Loyalty argues that the years between FDR's death in 1945 and Chief Justice Earl Warren's confirmation in 1953—the dawn of the Cold War—were, contrary to widespread belief, important years in Supreme Court history. Never before or since has a president so quickly and completely changed the ideological and temperamental composition of the Court. With remarkable swiftness and certainty, Truman constructed a Court on which he relied to lend constitutional credence to his political agenda.

In Courthouse Democracy and Minority Rights: Same-Sex Marriage in the States, Robert J. Hume shows how increasing the democratic accountability of courts has limited the ability of judges to act as reform agents. When judges are elected, or when their decisions can be easily overturned with initiative amendment procedures, they lose the capacity to stand up for the rights of the minorities. Hume bases his study on the issue of same-sex marriage, but his conclusions have implications for understanding the impact of all judges.

This book explains the reciprocal relations between the Supreme Court and the Israeli political system. It is based on a unique approach that contends that the non-governability of the political system and an alternative political culture are two key formal and informal variables affecting the behavior of several political players within the Israeli arena. The analysis illustrates the usefulness of such a model for analyzing long-term socio-political processes and explaining the actions of the players. Until this model changes significantly, the decisions of the High Court of Justice express the values of the state and enable Israel to remain a nation that upholds human rights. The Court's decisions determine the normative educational direction and reflect Israel's democratic character with regard to the values of human rights.