In the United States, almost 90 percent of state judges have to run in popular elections to remain on the bench. In the past decade, this peculiarly American institution has produced vicious multi-million-dollar political election campaigns and high-profile allegations of judicial bias and misconduct. The People’s Courts traces the history of judicial elections and Americans’ quest for an independent judiciary—one that would ensure fairness for all before the law—from the colonial era to the present. In the aftermath of economic disaster, nineteenth-century reformers embraced popular elections as a way to make politically appointed judges less susceptible to partisan patronage and more independent of the legislative and executive branches of government. This effort to reinforce the separation of powers and limit government succeeded in many ways, but it created new threats to judicial independence and provoked further calls for reform. Merit selection emerged as the most promising means of reducing partisan and financial influence from judicial selection. It too, however, proved vulnerable to pressure from party politics and special interest groups. Yet, as Shugerman concludes, it still has more potential for protecting judicial independence than either political appointment or popular election. The People’s Courts shows how Americans have been deeply committed to judicial independence, but that commitment has also been manipulated by special interests. By understanding our history of judicial selection, we can better protect and preserve the independence of judges from political and partisan influence.

In Appeal to the People’s Court: Rethinking Law, Judging, and Punishment, Vincent Luizzi turns to the goings on in courts at the lowest level of adjudication for fresh insights for rethinking these basic features of the legal order. In the pragmatic tradition of turning from fixed and unchanging conceptions, the work rejects the view of law as a set of black and white rules, of judging as the mechanical application of law to facts, and of punishment as a necessary, punitive response to crime. The author, a municipal judge and philosophy professor, joins theory and practice to feature the citizen in rethinking these institutions. The work includes a foreword by Richard Hull, special Guest Editor for this volume in Studies in Jurisprudence.

In this provocative work, Martin Shapiro proposes an original model for the study of courts, one that emphasizes the different modes of decision making and the multiple political roles that characterize the functioning of courts in different political systems.