ABSTRACT
Judicial policy-making has been defined in various ways, but few would disagree with the Joel B. Grossman and Joseph Tanenhaus assertion that it is the factor that punctuates the role of courts in the political system, for judicial decisions are frequently crucial catalysts directing social change, in part because men have long articulated the means and ends of their common existence through law. Undoubtedly, most of what courts do is not political, and policy implications extend no further than the parties to a case, unless the remedy selected or the method of reaching it is novel and adopted by judges in other jurisdictions. Judicial policy-making does not follow a single format, and the consequences of judicial activity are hardly uniform. The contributions included here cover six western European countries, as well as the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Community.
