ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how legal and political influences shape judicial decisions. It also explains how the methods that political scientists use to study the judicial process differ from the methods that lawyers use. Lawyers favor the legal model of judicial decision making. Most political scientists reject the legal model precisely because it downplays the political influences they believe shape judicial decisions. The chapter also explains how law and politics shape judicial decisions. Legal influences on judicial decision making are divisible into the procedural and the substantive. Political influences on judicial decision making are divisible into the attitudinal, the organizational, and the institutional. During the past half-century, political scientists have amassed substantial evidence that judges' public policy preferences influence their decisions. Institutional influences, including the structure of courts, the rules by which they operate, and their relationships to the public and to other branches of government, affect their decisions, regardless of the judges' public policy preferences.
