ABSTRACT
In a very real sense, the history of judicial administration has revolved around the issue of court reform. Since it first emerged as an identifiable specialization within the management field, judicial administration has been preoccupied with a clear goal: modernization of court organization and practice. One of the most important modernizing influences on the field was the creation of the Institute of Judicial Administration in 1952. The only major exceptions to the phenomenon are Judicature and Justice System Journal, two journals that count numerous social scientists among their audiences. The generic public management literature, however, rarely mentions the third branch of government. A cursory reading of the judicial administration literature will almost certainly leave one with the impression that the subdiscipline of public administration began in 1906 with Roscoe Pound’s controversial and iconoclastic speech to the American Bar Association. If the 1950s initiated a de-legalization trend in judicial administration, then the 1960s can be credited with popularizing court reform goals.
