The judge: a new actor in the political landscape

Abstract

As is the case for other research fields, both the judicial system and the actors performing its numerous functions can be observed from different perspectives and, to a certain extent, these may complement one another. Although legal scholars were the first to engage in this field – practically colonizing it for some time – the social scientists who came later developed an increasingly rich toolbox that now includes a variety of methods, theories and concepts progressively devised to approach the multifaceted world of justice. Our attention will focus more closely, though not exclusively, on the latter framework. In the European context, academic lawyers have traditionally cultivated the study of courts, judicial procedures and jurisprudence, mostly favoring a legal dimension. The formal rules that establish how the system should operate and how the judiciary should act are doubtless fundamental components of the administration of justice insofar as they provide valuable information that scholars cannot neglect whatever their perspective. Yet we know that implementing rules is neither a simple nor an obvious process. Laws do not always generate the expected outcomes owing to a host of factors, ranging from the nature of the issues to be addressed to the complexity of bureaucratic machineries. Such factors may also produce distorting or undesirable effects in implementation and laws may even remain totally or partially unenforced (Howlett and Ramesh 1995). To describe how judicial institutions work in practice, it is thus necessary to look beyond the normative dimension. Appropriate instruments are, therefore, required to investigate both sides of these institutions: how actual behavior develops, and interactions within this environment. This approach enables us to present an image of justice not solely confined to formal data. With this aim, contributions from other scientific fields have multiplied since the middle of the past century, first in the United States and later in Europe. All of them fall within the extended family of social sciences. Although they differ greatly, these studies generally tend to give priority to the operational