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This Article discusses supreme and constitutional courts’ internal organizational cultures, that is, the way in which justices organize their work and establish informal decision-making norms. Courts of last resort are often presented as exemplary deliberative institutions. The conference meeting, which convenes judges in quiet seclusion to debate, has been glorified as the most significant step in a court’s decision-making process. Based in part on qualitative empirical research, I argue, however, that French, American, and European Justices may not deliberate in the full sense that deliberative democrats have theorized. The Article distinguishes two types of high court deliberations, which I call …

At the beginning of the Twentieth century, a strong high court, be it national or supranational, represents a guarantee of democracy and rule of law against political parties and other organizations’ particular interests (at the national level) and states (at the international level). The push for reason-giving is a key factor in this new institutional order. Requiring that judges explain their decisions is no longer, or at least not exclusively, a tool for monitoring them and keeping them in check. Quite the reverse, reason- giving has become a legitimatizing factor for judicial power.