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The first transnational comparative study of legal party capability theory Justice is supposed to be blind. Cynics will say they know better. But what do the facts say? This groundbreaking study provides objective, data-driven answers to long-standing questions about winners and losers in courtrooms across the world. Does the party with the greater resources, such as money and influence, always prevail—and if so, why? Does Privilege Prevail? is the first book to evaluate these questions using a multi-country approach and, in doing so, assess what legal professionals and political scientists call party capability theory. Stacia Haynie, Kirk Randazzo, and Reginald Sheehan analyze over fifteen thousand litigation outcomes of the high courts of six countries—Australia, Canada, India, the Philippines, South Africa, and the United Kingdom—from 1970 to 2000. This unprecedented trove of data reveals that while the “haves” of society do undoubtedly enjoy certain advantages in the judicial system, a more complex explanation for legal outcomes is required than party capability theory provides—especially when it comes to assessing the role of attorneys and their legal teams or the components of the docket where judges can provide avenues for the “have nots” to succeed.

This comprehensive Research Handbook offers a multi-faceted analysis of the politics of law and courts and their role in governing. The authors develop new theoretical, empirical and methodological approaches to the study of law and courts as institutions, while accounting for the increasing diversity and complexity of the jurisdictions they oversee. The Research Handbook on Law and Courts features contributions from leading scholars in the United States, New Zealand, South Africa, Latin America and a number of European countries, enriching the scope of theoretical development in the field and identifying areas for future research. Chapters address courts'centrality to governance by explaining how they participate in holding democratic administrations politically accountable, as well as by highlighting the political significance of court decisions concerning citizenship and inclusion. Chapters include studies of interactions between legal arguments, courts and other institutions that rely on law, as well as reflections on the physical and digital spaces of law. This volume also examines demographic diversity in judging before concluding with discussions of increasing digitization and computing power, and the significance of both for legal processes and sociolegal scholarship. Scholars concerned with courts and political accountability in complex, multi-layered governance will find this Research Handbook an invaluable resource. Since courts and legal structures are increasingly significant around the world, the Research Handbook will also be useful to other social scientists concerned with inclusion, representation, and accountability through law.

Judging and Emotion investigates how judicial officers understand, experience, display, manage and deploy emotions in their everyday work, in light of their fundamental commitment to impartiality.Judging and Emotion challenges the conventional assumption that emotion is inherently unpredictable, stressful or a personal quality inconsistent with impartiality. Extensive empirical research with Australian judicial officers demonstrates the ways emotion, emotional capacities and emotion work are integral to judicial practice. Judging and Emotion articulates a broader conception of emotion, as a social practice emerging from interaction, and demonstrates how judicial officers undertake emotion work and use emotion as a resource to achieve impartiality. A key insight is that institutional requirements, including conceptions of impartiality as dispassion, do not completely determine the emotion dimensions of judicial work. Through their everyday work, judicial officers construct and maintain the boundaries of an impartial judicial role which necessarily incorporates emotion and emotion work.Building on a growing interest in emotion in law and social sciences, this book will be of considerable importance to socio-legal scholars, sociologists, the judiciary, legal practitioners and all users of the courts.