The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Judicial Behaviour

These are momentous times for the comparative analysis of judicial behaviour. Once the sole province of U.S. scholars--and mostly political scientists at that--now, researchers throughout the world, drawing on history, economics, law, and psychology, are illuminating how and why judges make the choices they do and what effect those choices have on society.

Bringing together leading scholars in the field, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Judicial Behaviour consists of ten sections, each devoted to important subfields: fundamentals--providing overviews designed to identify common trends in courts worldwide; approaches to judging; data, methods, and technologies; staffing the courts; advocacy, litigation, and appellate review; opinions; relations within, between, and among courts; judicial independence; court and society; and frontiers of comparative judicial behaviour--dedicated to expanding on opportunities for advancement.

Rather than focusing on particular courts, countries, or regions, the organization of the individual chapters is topical. Each chapter explores an important topic-critically evaluating the state of that topic and identifying opportunities for future work. While the forty-two chapters share a common interest in explaining the causes and effects of judicial choices, the range of approaches to comparative research is wide, inclusive, and interdisciplinary, from contrasts and similarities to sophisticated research agendas reflecting the emerging field of judicial behaviour around the world.

Lee Epstein, University Professor of Law & Political Science, Hilliard Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Southern California, Urška Šadl, , Gunnar Grendstad, UIB, Keren Weinshall, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Lee Epstein is University Professor of Law & Political Science and the Hilliard Distinguished Professor of Law at University of Southern California, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hebrew University and at Washington University in St. Louis.

Gunnar Grendstad is Professor of Political Science at Department of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen and principal investigator of Doranoh, a relational database of judicial behaviour on the Norwegian Supreme Court.

Urska %Sadl is part-time Professor of Law at the European University Institute. She is principal investigator of Judging Under the Influence: A Critical Assessment of the Role of Legal Actors on the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice.

Keren Weinshall is Professor of Law and the Edward S. Silver Chair in Civil Procedure at Hebrew University. Weinshall served as Founding Director of the Israeli Courts Research Division and represented Israel at the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice in the Council of Europe.