A court of specialists : judicial behavior on the UK Supreme Court / Chris Hanretty.

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020]

1 online resource (x, 306 pages) : illustrations

"This book offers the first quantitative study of decision-making on the UK Supreme Court. Covering the court's first ten years, it examines all stages of the court's decision-making process -- from the permission to appeal stage to the decision on the final outcome. The analysis of these distinct stages shows that legal factors matter. The most important predictor of whether an appellant will succeed in the Supreme Court is whether they've been able to convince judges in lower courts. The most important predictor of whether a case will be heard *at all* is whether it has been written up in multiple weekly law reports. But "legal factors mattering" doesn't mean that judges on the court are simply identical expressions of the law. The nature of the UK's court system means that judges arrive on the court as specialists in one or more areas of law (such as commercial law, or family law), or even systems of law (the court's Scottish and Northern Irish judges). These specialisms markedly affect behaviour on the court. Specialists in an area of law are more likely to hear cases in that area, and are more likely to write the lead opinion in that area. Non-specialists are less likely to disagree with specialists, and so disagreement is more likely to emerge when multiple specialists end up on the panel. Although political divisions between the justices do exist, these differences are much less marked than the divisions between experts in different areas of the law. The best way of understanding the UK Supreme Court is therefore to see it as a court of specialists. ""-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on May 04, 2020).

Print version: Hanretty, Chris. A court of specialists. New York : Oxford University Press, 2020

Access provided by Berkeley Law Library via ProQuest
Access provided by Berkeley Law Library via Oxford

English

9780197509265 electronic book
0197509266 electronic book
9780197509258 electronic book
0197509258 electronic book
9780197509234 hardcover

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