Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State: How the Courts Reformed America's Prisons

• NCJ Number: 177549
• Author(s): M M Feeley; E L Rubin
• Date Published: 1998
• Length: 505 pages
• Sale Source: Cambridge University Press
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This book studies judicial prison reform in the United States and the role of courts in the modern bureaucratic state.

Abstract

The book provides detailed accounts of how the courts have formulated and sought to implement their orders, and how this affected the traditional conceptions of federalism, separation of powers and the rule of law. It argues that judges have always made policy and will continue to do so. The modern administrative state embodies notions of government as an active policy maker rather than a passive adjudicator of conflicts, a concept that applies to courts as well. The book is divided into two sections: (1) The Case of Judicial Prison Reform, and (2) The Theory of Judicial Policy Making. The book concludes with discussions of: (1) The Nature of Judicial Policy Making, (2) The Desuetude of Structural Constraints, (3) The Transformation of the Rule of Law, (4) The Constrained Nature of Judicial Policy Making, and (5) Assessing the Successes of Judicial Prison Reform. Notes, indexes