NCJ Number
89769
Date Published
1982
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This article describes the political, organizational, and occupational forces affecting judges by outlining the courts' structure and the nature of the judicial environment.
Abstract
The authors review several traditional approaches to the study of judicial behavior along with much of the research generated by each of these approaches. They provide a general characterization and survey of sophisticated quantitative models used to predict and ultimately explain judicial behavior. Of particular interest is the recent attempt to establish deductive models whereby it can be deduced how judicial behavior would change, given certain changes in aspects of judging that influence perceived benefits and costs of alternative behaviors. Such deductive models represent a synthesis of the two prior perspectives: the legal-political and behavioral perspectives. Footnotes, a few tables, and about 60 references are supplied.