Placing State Supreme Courts in State Politics, by Brace, Hall and Langer, tries to place the various state supreme courts (although in the case of NY it is called the high court because the Supreme Court is the trial court level) within the state political context. In order to accomplish this, the article looks at the courts and their influence and how they were influenced in the abortion controversy.
The first thing that stuck out at me when reading this article was then last line in the abstract. “Moreover, by capitalizing on the analytical advantages of comparative state judicial politics scholarship, scholars will be able to solve some of the most complex puzzles in the study of state politics.” This is a pretty impressive claim that the author makes – and it immediately pulls me into the study to see if they really can prove this. While I find courts important, it would shock me to find that a study of court can solve most of the complex puzzles in state politics.
I found the overview of current research to be helpful. While I tend to enjoy judicial articles, I am in no way very knowledgeable about the field. This overview presented me with the main points. Additionally, the authors were able to state their problem with the current state of the research. The main problem that they had was that the research dealt with the micro-level behavior of the court, rather than the behavior of the court in the context of the state as a whole.
I think that this is primarily because the literature has always separated out the courts, and they are viewed as an isolated institution rather than one that plays a role in the day-to-day politics and policy making that is normally undertaken by the studies. I base this assumption on the reading we have done for our various classes. In the reading that we have been doing, the focus has been on major policy making in the legislative process and how different factors (gender, professionalism, and interest groups to name a few) can affect that process. However, the state courts don’t play much, if any, of a role in that process. Rather they belong to a different process that occurs once the legislative process is complete.
I did not find the discussion on the abortion proceedings to be of significance to the question of how the state court is placed into state politics. It seems to be common knowledge that a court can overturn a statute. However in a state court they can only overturn a statute as unconstitutional if it doesn’t match the constitution of the State. The abortion debate seems to indicate that they are overturning statutes in relation to the federal constitution. However, those are questions for the federal courts alone to answer. So I found the abortion discussion somewhat muddied by this fact. Additionally, they also looked at micro-behavior of the court – the behavior of individual judges in upholding or not upholding the statute. That seems to go against their view that you need to more broadly view the roles of the state courts.
Lastly, I did not find anything in this paper that indicated that the study of courts on a macro level would answer the most complex questions. I think that they proved courts matter – but I do not think that was ever in doubt. Additionally, they provided a very rough framework for how to view courts in a macro level, while still looking at the micro behavior of the court. So that was interesting. However, the initial draw to see how courts would fix state problems did not pan out, and that is disappointing.
Showing posts with label Brace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brace. Show all posts
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Development and Neglect in State Politics
These articles were written approximately 12 years apart, and provide an indicator of the progress, or lack thereof, made within the field of state politics.
In Jewell’s article, “The Neglected World of State Politics” (1982), he mentioned that there was not enough state research being done. There was no unifying theory. The field lacked data, access to current and relevant data, and comparative studies, according to Jewell. Jewell also stated that there were several weaknesses of the current generation of state scholars, including; lack of relationship between scholars and actual practitioners in the state and the focus on methodological and numerical studies.
Jewell’s article also makes some broad sweeping statements such as “Legislatures have changed even more dramatically, with less turn-over in membership (page 639),” and:
“The levels of party competition have increased in most of the states, and now there is evidence that the outcome of state elections is affected less by traditional party loyalties and more by the abilities of candidates and the skills and resources that they bring to campaigns.” Id.
When I first was reading these statements I couldn’t help but disagree with Jewell from my own perspective in California. The Legislature here turns over more than it did in 1982 because of term limits. In fact, the newest class of Legislators in the Legislature is the group with the least experience in the state Legislature ever. Additionally, party politics has grown in California, with the Democratic and Republican party being the two big elephants in the room. Then I realized that I was at fault for one of the other weaknesses in Jewell’s article – the lack of ability to look outside the state and make comparisons between one state and another, and to form a unifying theory out of those comparisons.
Twelve years later Paul Brace and Aubrey Jewell wrote an article on the state of state political research. Their article also lamented that there was no unifying theory in state political research. They state that the field could benefit from a unifying theory in three ways: 1)integrate the various studies of state politics; 2) reconcile research concerning macro-level outcomes with theories and findings concerning micro-level behavior; and 3) capitalize on the unique comparative and contextual analytical strengths state political research could embody.
This later study noticed that there was more empirical work with sound methodology than there was a year before. Additionally, the same areas that tended to get national attention gained attention in the state political arena. One example of this is elections. In the national arena there is a lot of attention and research done on elections and electoral behavior. During the period of this article, there were also a lot of state level election and electoral behavior studies.
However, Bruce and Jewett argue that these studies, while useful, suffer from a lack of comparison and unification. In this argument, that there is a lack of comparison and unification in state political research, the earlier and later articles are united.
Jewell and Bruce/Jewett are also in agreement on the need for insight into the political life. Jewell argued that one of the strengths of a state political researcher is the knowledge of the subject – the actors – at the state level. Bruce and Jewett also agree, and cite the large number of good papers which stem from the APSA Congressional Fellowship as an example. Jewell states that such knowledge of the actors is necessary, and Bruce and Jewett seem to agree. Bruce and Jewett note that there is not a state internship program where this type of interplay between the actors and scholars is at work.
However, I again direct them to California. There is a California Assembly, Senate, Executive and Judicial fellowship program run by Sacramento State. This fellowship program places Master’s level students into an actual office in one of the three branches of choice. These fellows then interact with the member whose office they work in on a regular basis, and attend lunches with all the members on a regular basis. It would seem that this type of interaction would produce the quality “insider” research that is needed. However, from experience, I can tell you that these fellowships are looked at as ways to get a job in the building rather than do meaningful research. The split between practitioners of state politics and researchers of state politics is emphasized in this situation. The researchers need access to the practitioners, not just the other way around.
For all the differences in these two articles, and for the differences in time between their publications, there are two unifying concepts. The first is that there are not enough comparisons done in the fields of state political research. There are too many individual state researchers, rather than comparative researchers. Secondly, there needs to be some unifying theory or principle that can be learned from these studies. These two articles are remarkably unified on these points.
In Jewell’s article, “The Neglected World of State Politics” (1982), he mentioned that there was not enough state research being done. There was no unifying theory. The field lacked data, access to current and relevant data, and comparative studies, according to Jewell. Jewell also stated that there were several weaknesses of the current generation of state scholars, including; lack of relationship between scholars and actual practitioners in the state and the focus on methodological and numerical studies.
Jewell’s article also makes some broad sweeping statements such as “Legislatures have changed even more dramatically, with less turn-over in membership (page 639),” and:
“The levels of party competition have increased in most of the states, and now there is evidence that the outcome of state elections is affected less by traditional party loyalties and more by the abilities of candidates and the skills and resources that they bring to campaigns.” Id.
When I first was reading these statements I couldn’t help but disagree with Jewell from my own perspective in California. The Legislature here turns over more than it did in 1982 because of term limits. In fact, the newest class of Legislators in the Legislature is the group with the least experience in the state Legislature ever. Additionally, party politics has grown in California, with the Democratic and Republican party being the two big elephants in the room. Then I realized that I was at fault for one of the other weaknesses in Jewell’s article – the lack of ability to look outside the state and make comparisons between one state and another, and to form a unifying theory out of those comparisons.
Twelve years later Paul Brace and Aubrey Jewell wrote an article on the state of state political research. Their article also lamented that there was no unifying theory in state political research. They state that the field could benefit from a unifying theory in three ways: 1)integrate the various studies of state politics; 2) reconcile research concerning macro-level outcomes with theories and findings concerning micro-level behavior; and 3) capitalize on the unique comparative and contextual analytical strengths state political research could embody.
This later study noticed that there was more empirical work with sound methodology than there was a year before. Additionally, the same areas that tended to get national attention gained attention in the state political arena. One example of this is elections. In the national arena there is a lot of attention and research done on elections and electoral behavior. During the period of this article, there were also a lot of state level election and electoral behavior studies.
However, Bruce and Jewett argue that these studies, while useful, suffer from a lack of comparison and unification. In this argument, that there is a lack of comparison and unification in state political research, the earlier and later articles are united.
Jewell and Bruce/Jewett are also in agreement on the need for insight into the political life. Jewell argued that one of the strengths of a state political researcher is the knowledge of the subject – the actors – at the state level. Bruce and Jewett also agree, and cite the large number of good papers which stem from the APSA Congressional Fellowship as an example. Jewell states that such knowledge of the actors is necessary, and Bruce and Jewett seem to agree. Bruce and Jewett note that there is not a state internship program where this type of interplay between the actors and scholars is at work.
However, I again direct them to California. There is a California Assembly, Senate, Executive and Judicial fellowship program run by Sacramento State. This fellowship program places Master’s level students into an actual office in one of the three branches of choice. These fellows then interact with the member whose office they work in on a regular basis, and attend lunches with all the members on a regular basis. It would seem that this type of interaction would produce the quality “insider” research that is needed. However, from experience, I can tell you that these fellowships are looked at as ways to get a job in the building rather than do meaningful research. The split between practitioners of state politics and researchers of state politics is emphasized in this situation. The researchers need access to the practitioners, not just the other way around.
For all the differences in these two articles, and for the differences in time between their publications, there are two unifying concepts. The first is that there are not enough comparisons done in the fields of state political research. There are too many individual state researchers, rather than comparative researchers. Secondly, there needs to be some unifying theory or principle that can be learned from these studies. These two articles are remarkably unified on these points.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
