Some New Concerns of Legal Process Research within Political Science

Abstract

Political science has generally been divided into the fields of political theory, comparative government, international relations, public administration, policy formation, state and local government, and public law. The public law or legal process field has also been called the law and politics field to emphasize that it is the study within political science of the judicial process, constitutional law, and related subjects. Law and politics research has changed greatly since 1955 in both methodology and substance. It is the purpose of the articles in this symposium to illustrate some of the more recent trends in law and politics research, particularly trends of interest to law professors, sociologists, and others in the broader area of law and society research. The methodology of public law within political science as of 1955 consisted almost exclusively of the analysis and synthesis of Supreme Court opinions relating to cases in constitutional law (McCloskey, 1957). In the following eight or so years, many political scientists supplemented this legalistic method with an anecdotal method emphasizing stories of what happened behind the scenes with regard to events preceding (Vose, 1958, and Murphy, 1964) or following (Peltason, 1961) the Supreme Court opinions. This anecdotal analysis became the basis for new textbooks and courses in the Judicial Process (Murphy and Pritchett, 1961). Likewise, other political scientists supplemented the legalistic method by using the same Supreme Court opinions to quantitatively measure differences among the judges (Schubert, 1958 and 1965) or differences among the facts in the cases (Kort, 1957 and 1968). This measurement analysis became the basis for other new textbooks and courses in Judicial Behavior (Schubert, 1964). Since approximately the early 1960's, there has been an attempt to go beyond legal synthesis, anecdotes, and mere meas-