How effective are courts as policymaking institutions?
Generally speaking, courts play a far larger role
in American biodiversity law than they do in comparable
Australian and Canadian statutory programs. As
a result, studying endangered species protection offers
a useful way to identify and isolate the policy impacts
of judicial intervention. In the two cases I examine,
the American system functioned at least as well as,
and sometimes better than, the biodiversity programs
in Australia and Canada. Contrary to most scholarship
on the topic, lawsuits did not appear to slow the
American policymaking process significantly; rather,
litigation helped enforce important legal provisions
and forced government officials to address critical
shortcomings in their regulatory actions. At least in
these cases, then, litigation acted as a productive and
useful part of the policymaking process.Governmen
