Policy Making in an Independent Judiciary
Subtitle: The Norwegian Supreme Court
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 254
ISBN-13: 9781785521300
Subjects: Constitutional courts; Appellate courts; Policy sciences; Norway, politics and government
Description: "How do the justices of a nation's highest court arrive at their decisions? In the context of the US Supreme Court, the answer to this question is well established: justices seek to enshrine policy preferences in their decisions, but they do so in a manner consistent with 'the law' and in recognition that they are members of an institution with defined expectations and constraints. In other words, a justice's behaviour is a function of motives, means, and opportunities. Using Norway as a case study, this book shows that these forces are not peculiar to the decisional behaviour of American justices. Employing a modified attitudinal model, Grendstad, Shaffer and Waltenburg establish that the preferences of Norway's justices are related to their decisions. Consequently, the authors show how an understanding of judicial behaviour developed and most fully tested in the American judicial system is transportable to the courts of other countries" --Back cover.