BiblioVault - Books by Maveety, Nancy

The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior

Nancy Maveety, Editor

University of Michigan Press, 2002

In The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior, prominent political scientists critically examine the contributions to the field of public law of the pioneering scholars of judicial behavior: C. Hermann Pritchett, Glendon Schubert, S. Sidney Ulmer, Harold J. Spaeth, Joseph Tanenhaus, Beverly Blair Cook, Walter F. Murphy, J. Woodward Howard, David J. Danelski, David Rohde, Edward S. Corwin, Alpheus Thomas Mason, Robert G. McCloskey, Robert A. Dahl, and Martin Shapiro.

Unlike past studies that have traced the emergence and growth of the field of judicial studies, The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior accounts for the emergence and exploration of three current theoretical approaches to the study of judicial behavior--attitudinal, strategic, and historical-institutionalist--and shows how the research of these foundational scholars has contributed to contemporary debates about how to conceptualize judges as policy makers. Chapters utilize correspondence of and interviews with some early scholars, and provide a format to connect the concerns and controversies of the first political scientists of law and courts to contemporary challenges and methodological debates among today's judicial scholars. The volume's purpose in looking back is to look forward: to contribute to an ecumenical research agenda on judicial decision making, and, ultimately, to the generation of a unified, general theory of judicial behavior.

The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior will be of interest to graduate students in the law and courts field, political scientists interested in the philosophy of social science and the history of the discipline, legal practitioners and researchers, and political commentators interested in academic theorizing about public policy making.

Nancy L. Maveety is Associate Professor of Political Science, Tulane University.

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Representation Rights and the Burger Years

Nancy Maveety

University of Michigan Press, 1991

In Representation Rights and the Burger Years, political scientist Nancy Maveety tackles the constitutional meaning of "fair and effective" representation rights and evaluates the specific contributions that the Supreme Court made to this definition during the Burger era.

The Court of Chief Justice Warren Burger has been described as one that made no distinctive jurisprudential contributions. It has been dismissed as a court overshadowed by both its predecessor and its successor. By contrast, Maveety argues that the Burger Court in fact revolutionized constitutional understandings of political representation, expanding, in particular, the judicial scrutiny of political institutions. Moving beyond the "one person, one vote" reapportionment initiated by the Warren Court, it opened the way for the articulation of group-based constitutional representation rights.

This group-based approach to representation questions broadened groups' constitutional claims to equal political influence. Yet, as Maveety perceptively shows, this broader interpretation of "representable interests" was grounded in mainstream American conceptions of political representation. The great value of Maveety's study is the presentation of a "typology of group representation," which explains and validates the Burger Court's work on representation rights. This typology, drawn from American history, political theory, and political practice, offers a new approach for evaluating the precedental record of the Burger years and a sophisticated framework for understanding the interaction between constitutional law and politics.

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The U.S. Supreme Court and the Electoral Process

Second Edition

David K. Ryden, Editor

Georgetown University Press, 2002

The U.S. Supreme Court—at least until Bush v. Gore—had seemed to float along in an apolitical haze in the mind of the electorate. It was the executive branch and the legislative branch that mucked about in politics getting dirty, the judicial branch kept its robes—and nose—clean. The U.S. Supreme Court and the Electoral Process makes it abundantly clear however that before, during, and after the judicial decision that made George W. Bush the President of the United States, everything was, is, and will likely be, politics-including the decisions handed down by the highest court in the land.

This revised and updated edition takes into account not only the recent famous (or infamous, depending on the reader's point of view) judicial decision on the Presidency, but a myriad of others as well in which the U.S. Supreme Court has considered the constitutionality of a wide range of issues involving voting and elections, representation, and political participation. Practitioners and academics in both law and political science examine a number of court actions that directly affect how we choose those who govern us, and how those decisions have affected our electoral politics, constitutional doctrine, and the fundamental concepts of democracy, including: racial redistricting, term limits, political patronage, campaign finance regulations, third-party ballot access, and state ballot initiatives limiting civil liberties.

Of the first edition, CHOICE said, The U.S. Supreme Court and the Electoral Process "plumbs the Supreme Court's constitutive apolitical role as 'primary shaper of the electoral system' and reveals the pervasive involvement of the Court in the political process."

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