The Rule of Law is Dead! Long Live the Rule of Law!

Polls show that a significant proportion of the public considers judges to be political. This result holds whether Americans are asked about Supreme Court justices, federal judges, state judges, or judges in general. At the same time, a large majority of the public also believes that judges are fair and impartial arbiters, and this belief also applies across the board. In this paper, I consider what this half-law-half-politics understanding of the courts means for judicial legitimacy and the public confidence on which that legitimacy rests. Drawing on the Legal Realists, and particularly on the work of Thurman Arnold, I argue against the notion that the contradictory views must be resolved in order for judicial legitimacy to remain intact. A rule of law built on contending legal and political beliefs is not necessarily fair or just. But it can be stable. At least in the context of law and courts, a house divided may stand

Court Review: Volume 41, Issue 2 - Speak to Values: How to Promote the Courts and Blunt Attacks on Judiciary

This article will outline a number of ideas for communications that could help to promote stronger public support for the courts when they do come under attack. The ideas take into consideration the desires, motivations, and values of the American public that have been learned from years of conducting national and statewide public opinion research on the judicial system for clients such as the ACLU, Justice at Stake Project, the Youth Law Center, and the Open Society Institute, among others. Here are some of the observations on American public opinion that lead to suggestions for court advocates

Court Review: Volume 41, Issue 3-4 - Friends of the Court? The Bar, the Media, and the Public

The fourth panel discussion at the National Forum on Judicial Independence explores the way the public thinks about judicial independence and ways in which the media and members of the bar may affect judicial independence. The discussion was led by then-AJA secretary Steve Leben, a state general-jurisdiction trial judge from Kansas. Panelists were John Russonello, a pollster and consultant to nonprofit organizations, political campaigns, and other clients, and Malcolm Feeley, professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California-Berkeley. The National Forum on Judicial Independence was supported by a generous grant from the Joyce Foundation of Chicago, Illinois