Other examples are easy toWnd: Gibson, Caldeira, and Baird ( 1998 ) observedthat in 1996 , the Irish Supreme Court accepted an appeal challenging the recent
referendum approving a constitutional amendment to permit divorce. Prior to the
appeal, the Court had ordered the government to stop spending money to run
advertisements in favor of the referendum (Parkin 1996 ). Both actions had the
eVect of delaying a majority intent on liberalizing divorce.
The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation found in 1996 in favor of Green-
peace and overturned President Yeltsin’s decree permitting the importation of
nuclear waste into Russia. Yeltsin’s government had hoped to use funds earned
from the processing of imported nuclear waste to Wnance the completion of a
plant in Krasnoyarsk (Gurushina 1996 ). The Supreme Court of Poland upheld the
presidential election of November 1995 and declared Kwasniewski the winner, despite
his having violated electoral law by giving false information about his educational
background. The justices unanimously agreed on the violation, but disagreed on
whether it had made any diVerence to the outcome of the elections (Karpinski 1995 ).
And of course no list of politically signiWcant court rulings could ignoreBushvs.
Gore, the decision by the US Supreme Court in 2001 that eVectively awarded the
presidency to George W. Bush.
In sum, then, the decisions of high courts throughout the world have made a
diVerence for both the leaders and the led in society, aVecting matters of high policy,
the details of everyday life, as well as the ‘‘leadership of the free world.’’ As Alexis de
Tocqueville ( 1945 ,vol. 1 , 280 ) said long ago, ‘‘Scarcely any political question arises in
the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.’’ How
right he has become, not just in the USA, but throughout the world!
The purpose of this chapter is therefore to consider the state of the literature on
courts and the judicial process. With the massive proliferation of research on judi-
ciaries throughout the world, I cannot hope to provide an exhaustive consideration of
all interesting and relevant research. The scholarship (like the discipline of political
science itself) is diverse, and therefore diYcult to organize. One cannot ignore,
however, the vast research on the processes by which judges make decisions; nor the
impressive scholarship on the essential and distinctive political capital of courts—
institutional legitimacy. In addition, the emerging literature on judicial independence
and accountability is highlighted in this review. Throughout, I will attempt to identify
important research questions to which theWeld must attend.
1 Judicial Decision-making
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The heart of research on courts has been and continues to be the study of judicial
decision-making. In 1983 , I asserted, ‘‘In a nutshell, judges decisions are a function
judicial institutions 515