Short description
The political nature of legal, and especially judicial, decision making is the subject of this book. How does lawmaking by judges affect American politics, and how in turn, does politics affect judicial activity?
Long description
The political nature of legal, and especially judicial, decision making is the subject of this book. It attempts to integrate the American approach to law, a balance of commitment and skepticism, with the Continental tradition in social theory, philosophy and psychology. The centre of this work is the question of how politics affects judicial activity, and how in turn lawmaking by judges affects American politics. Opposing views on whether law is political in character are considered, and the author puts forward his own theory of adjudication that includes accounts of judicial rhetoric and the experience of judging.
Review
Duncan Kennedy's Critique of Adjudication is a lively, accessible and, at times, deliciously irreverent book. It is also a very serious scholarly attempt to explore and theorize the adjudicative process in North America...[It] is well-structured and signposted throughout so that, although densely argued and full of (generally highly diverting) sub-themes, one can usually find one's way back to the main thread of the argument without much difficulty. -- Joanne Conaghan Journal of Law and Society
Table of contents
- Part Ideological stakes in adjudication
- the distinction between adjudication and legislation
- ideological conflict over the definition of legal rules
- Part The problem of judicial legislation
- the paradox of American critical legalism
- policy and coherence
- Part Ideology in adjudication
- policy and ideology
- ideologically oriented legal work
- strategizing strategic behaviour in interpretation
- Part Consequences of adjudication
- the moderation and empowerment effects
- the legitimation effect
- adjudication in social theory
- Part Post rights
- rights in American legal consciousness
- the critique of rights
- conclusion
- landscapes along the highway of infinite regress