Kirk Randazzo is the author (with Richard Waterman) of Checking the Courts: Law, Ideology, and Contingent Discretion (SUNY Press 2014). Randazzo is associate professor of political science at the University of South Carolina. He has previously written several books on the courts and foreign policy.

How does legislative language affect the courts? Randazzo and Waterman take on this long-standing question with original data and analysis of the factors that drive judicial behavior. Their approach is innovative and methodologically novel. Using newly constructed measures of statutory detail, they find that judges are influenced by the level of discretion afforded to them in the writing of legislation. The book helps scholars of political science and the law to better understand the interactions between the branches of government.

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Kirk Randazzo, “Checking the Courts: Law, Ideology, and Contingent Discretion” (SUNY Press, 2014) 19:31 Share

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Kirk Randazzo, “Checking the Courts: Law, Ideology, and Contingent Discretion” (SUNY Press, 2014)