Judicial Reputation
A Comparative Theory
Judges are society's elders and experts, our masters and mediators. We depend on them to dispense justice with integrity, deliberation, and efficiency. Yet judges, as Alexander Hamilton famously noted, lack the power of the purse or the sword. They must rely almost entirely on their reputations to secure compliance with their decisions, obtain resources, and maintain their political influence. In Judicial Reputation, Nuno Garoupa and Tom Ginsburg show how reputation is not only an essential quality of the judiciary as a whole, but also of individual judges. Perceptions of judicial systems around the world range from widespread admiration to utter contempt, and as judges participate within these institutions some earn respect, while others are scorned. Transcending the conventional lenses of legal culture and tradition that are used to analyze this variation, Garoupa and Ginsburg approach the subject through their long-standing research on the economics of judiciary information and status, examining the fascinating effects that governmental interactions, multi-court systems, extrajudicial work, and the international rule-of-law movement have on the reputations of judges in this era.
Contents:
Preface
Introduction
1. A Theory of Judicial Reputation and Audiences
2. Pockets of Exception
3. Wearing Two Hats: Judges and Nonjudicial Functions
4. The Selection and Monitoring of Judges: The Spread of Judicial Councils
5. When Courts Collide: Intracourt Relations and the Problem of Audiences
6. The Rule of Lawyers: Globalization, International Law, and Judicial Reputation
7. Conclusion: The Shift toward the External Audience and Lessons for Reform
Appendix A: List of Courts Included in the Dataset
Appendix B: Data on Judicial Councils
Notes
Index
About the Author
Nuno Garoupa is professor of law at Texas A&M University and holds the chair in research innovation at the Catolica Global School of Law, Universidade Catolica de Portugal in Lisbon, Portugal.
Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Professor of International Law and professor of political science at the University of Chicago.
Reviews
"'Judicial Reputation' offers an excellent application of state-of-the-art theory to the organization of the courts. With clean writing and a clear structure, the highly regarded Garoupa and Ginsburg have written a wonderful book which makes serious, much-needed advances in the empirical study of courts, in comparative law, in constitutional law, and in comparative politics" – J. Mark Ramseyer, Harvard Law School
"'Judicial Reputation' is the culmination of a remarkable research agenda by two of the foremost scholars of the world's judicial systems. The authors have produced a model of comparative scholarship, integrating methodologies in a productive and persuasive way by employing both quantitative and qualitative empirics. From the fine-grained details of appointment processes to sweeping questions of international judicial networks, Garoupa and Ginsburg make one thing very clear: reputation matters. Shifting away from the conventional approaches that privilege legal tradition and path dependency, the authors embrace a functionalist analysis of reputation to explain judicial development. By disaggregating collective and individual reputation and the roles of internal and external audiences, they present a persuasive theory of institutional change that better accounts for the pockets of exception in individual systems and the areas of convergence across systems. In the course of their argument, the authors also challenge the ideal of global best practices in judicial reform – a welcome reminder that such practices are often contingent and must be tailored to specific contexts. 'Judicial Reputation' will be an essential resource for students in political science and law, but it should also be required reading for any scholar, judge, or politician interested in judicial reform" – Erin F. Delaney, Northwestern Law School
"Garoupa and Ginsburg offer the first comprehensive theory of judicial reputation, showing how collective or individual reputations of judges can have a variety of impacts on both the functioning of courts and legal systems in general. Their decisive analysis draws on experiences from Asia, Europe, and the Americas. 'Judicial Reputation' is a book of huge significance – not only, as its title suggests, for comparative legal theory, but also because of the vast potential applications of Garoupa and Ginsburg's research. The chapter on the international reputation of judges, for example, unveils a fascinating dimension of globalization and paves the way for further research on forum shopping and international judicial competition" – Gilles Cuniberti, University of Luxembourg
