Courts of Good and Ill Repute: Garoupa and Ginsburg’s Judicial Reputation: A Comparative Theory

Authors

Tracey E. George
G. Mitu Gulati, Duke Law SchoolFollow

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

2016

Keywords

judges, reputation, institutional analysis, courts

Abstract

Nuno Garoupa and Tom Ginsburg have published an ambitious book that seeks to account for the great diversity of judicial systems based, in part, on how courts are designed to marshal the power of a high public opinion of the judiciary. Judges, the book posits, care deeply about their reputations both inside and outside the courts. Courts are designed to capitalize on judges’ desire to maximize their reputation, and judges’ existing stock of reputation can affect the design of the courts which they serve. We find much to like in this book, ranging from its intriguing and ambitious positive claims to its masterful use of comparative case studies from around the globe. However, we also have questions about the ability of the theory to hang together in a unified manner and to do the work assigned to it.

Citation

Tracey E. George & G. Mitu Gulati, Courts of Good and Ill Repute: Garoupa & Ginsburg's Judicial Reputation: A Comparative Theory, 83 University of Chicago Law Review 1683-1715 (2016) (reviewing Nuno Garoupa & Tom Ginsburg, Judicial Reputation: A Comparative Theory (2015))