The Judicial Process: Law, Courts, and Judicial Policymaking

The Judicial Process: Law, Courts, and Judicial Politics is an all-new, concise yet comprehensive core text that introduces students to the nature and significance of the judicial process in the United States and across the globe. It is social scientific in its approach, situating the role of the courts and their impact on public policy within a strong foundation in legal theory, or political jurisprudence, as well as legal scholarship. Authors Christopher P. Banks and David M. O’Brien do not shy away from the politics of the judicial process, and offer unique insight into cutting-edge and highly relevant issues. In its distinctive boxes, “Contemporary Controversies over Courts” and “In Comparative Perspective,” the text examines topics such as the dispute pyramid, the law and morality of same-sex marriages, the “hardball politics” of judicial selection, plea bargaining trends, the right to counsel and “pay as you go” justice, judicial decisions limiting the availability of class actions, constitutional courts in Europe, the judicial role in creating major social change, and the role lawyers, juries and alternative dispute resolution techniques play in the U.S. and throughout the world. Photos, cartoons, charts, and graphs are used throughout the text to facilitate student learning and highlight key aspects of the judicial process.

    Christopher P. Banks is a professor at Kent State University where he has served as the department’s graduate coordinator for its M.A. and Ph.D. program, and as an affiliate for the Center for Public Administration and Public Policy. Presently, he is the department’s prelaw advisor. He regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the judicial process, constitutional law, civil rights and liberties, law and society, terrorism, and American politics.  He holds a J.D. from the University of Dayton and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.
    Before becoming a faculty member at Kent State, Professor Banks practiced law in civil and criminal litigation and was active in local and state politics; in the late 1980’s he was appointed by Connecticut Governor William O’Neill to serve as an administrative hearing officer for the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities.
    Professor Banks is the author of the Judicial Politics in the D.C. Circuit Court (John Hopkins University Press, 1999); the co-author of The U.S. Supreme Court and New Federalism: From the Rehnquist to Roberts Court (Lanham: Roman & Littlefield, 2012) and Courts and Judicial Policymaking (Prentice Hall, 2008); and co-editor of the Final Arbiter: The Consequences of Bush v. Gore for Law and Politics (State University of New York Press, 2006) along with Superintending Democracy: The Courts and the Political Process (University of Akron Press, 2001). He has published numerous book chapters, book reviews, and journal articles on judicial behavior, law and politics, federalism, terrorism, and human rights in Justice System Journal, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Judicature, International Journal of Human Rights, Public Integrity: The Journal for the American Society of Public Administration, Social Science Quarterly, Southeastern Political Review, and The Journal of Law & Politics, among others.

David M. O’Brien is the Leone Reaves and George W. Spicer Professor at the University of Virginia. Prior to teaching at the University of Virginia, he taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Puget Sound, where he was chairman of the Department of Politics. He served as a research associate in the Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Chief Justice and, in 1982–1983, as a judicial fellow at the Supreme Court. He also has been a visiting fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York (1981–1982); has been a Fulbright lecturer in constitutional studies at Oxford University, England (1987–1988); has been a Fulbright researcher in Japan (1993–1994); has held the Fulbright Chair for Senior Scholars at the University of Bologna in Italy (1999); and was a visiting professor at Florida International University (2002) and at the Institut d’Etudes Politique, Université Lumière-Lyon II in Lyon, France (2006).

Among his many books are Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics, eleventh edition (2017), which won the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award; Constitutional Law and Politics: Struggles for Power and Governmental Accountability and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, tenth edition, two volumes (2017); Animal Sacrifice and Religious Freedom: Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah (2004); To Dream of Dreams: Religious Freedom and Constitutional Politics in Postwar Japan (1996); Supreme Court Watch, published annually since 1991; Congress Shall Make No Law: The First Amendment, Unprotected Expression, and the U.S. Supreme Court (2010); Judicial Roulette (1988); What Process Is Due? Courts and Science Policy Disputes (1987); The Public’s Right to Know: The First Amendment and the Supreme Court (1981); and Privacy, Law, and Public Policy (1979). He has coauthored The Judicial Process: Law, Court and Judicial Politics (2015), Courts and Judicial Policymaking (2008) Government by the People (22^nd ed. 2008), and Abortion and American Politics (1993); edited or coedited several books, including The Lanahan Readings on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, third edition (2010) and Judicial Independence in the Age of Democracy: Critical Perspectives from Around the World (2001); and contributed more than 100 articles and chapters in professional journals and books.