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Judges As Humans, Chad M. Oldfather

Chad M Oldfather

This is a review of Judges and Their Audiences: A Perspective on Judicial Behavior, by Lawrence Baum. Among the reasons this book is notable is that it draws heavily on social psychology in critiquing and suggesting modifications to the standard political science accounts of judicial behavior. In that regard it represents a substantial step toward the development of a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary picture of judicial behavior. In the review, I argue that Baum’s analysis is important not only for its own sake, but also because consideration of institutional reforms of the sort that have been and will continue to be proposed …