What's Law Got to Do With It?: What Judges Do, Why They Do It, and What's at Stake

Figures and Tables ix
Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: So What Does Law Have to Do with It? 1
Charles Gardner Geyh

PART I: Setting the Stage: The Debate over What Law Has to Do with What Judges Do

1 What’s Law Got to Do with It: Thoughts from “The Realm of Political Science” 17
Jeffrey A. Segal
2 On the Study of Judicial Behaviors: Of Law, Politics, Science, and Humility 41
Stephen B. Burbank

PART II : Distinguishing Law from Other Influences on Judicial Decision-making

3 Law and Policy: More and Less than a Dichotomy 71
Lawrence Baum
4 Law Is Politics 92
Frank B. Cross
5 Path Dependence in Studies of Legal Decision-making 114
Eileen Braman and J. Mitchell Pickerill
6 Looking for Law in All the Wrong Places:
Some Suggestions for Modeling Legal Decision-making 143
Barry Friedman and Andrew D. Martin
7 Stare Decisis as Reciprocity Norm 173
Stefanie A. Lindquist

PART III : What Law Has to Do with What Judges Do and Its Implications for Judicial Selection

8 How Judicial Elections Are Like Other Elections and What That Means for the Rule of Law 197
Matthew J. Streb
9 On the Cataclysm of Judicial Elections and Other Popular Antidemocratic Myths 223
Melinda Gann Hall
10 Are Judicial Elections Democracy-Enhancing? 248
David Pozen

PART IV: What Law has to do with What Judges Do and Its Implications for Public Confidence in the Courts

11 Judging the Politics of Judging: Are Politicians in Robes Inevitably Illegitimate? 281
James L. Gibson
12 The Rule of Law Is Dead! Long Live the Rule of Law! 306
Keith J. Bybee
13 Three Views from the Bench 328
Frank Sullivan, Nancy Vaidik, and Sarah Evans Barker

About the Contributors 343
Index 345