The Costs and Benefits of American Policy-Making Venues

Abstract

Many law and policy scholars consider judges inimical to good public policymaking, and the criticisms they level on the judiciary implicitly reflect some of the concerns raised by Alexander Bickel and other critics. Despite the charge by critics that judges are institutionally ill equipped to participate in the policy‐making process and that legal processes are costly, there are reasons to believe otherwise. This article uses field interviews and three case studies of an environmental dispute in the Pacific Northwest to show that the judiciary can be an institutional venue that enhances public input, can be more inclusive than other venues, and produces positive‐sum outcomes when other venues cannot. The findings also suggest that legislative and agency policymaking are just as contentious and costly as judicial policy‐making processes.

A Case Study of Data in the Management of Water Resources in the Gunnison River Basin, Colorado

“…Michaels & Monforton, 2005;Mooney, 2004). The norms of policy makers who value certainty were challenged by scientists' acceptance of uncertainty and changing data as a normal part of the research process (Abe, Pierce, Loverich Jr., & Tsurutani, 1987;Bradeshaw & Borchers, 2000;Ley, 2014). Research on the information flow between members of these two professions have found differences in the social norms of scientist and policy makers which create communication barriers impeding the integration of data into policy (Cash et al, November 2002;Flannery & May, 2000;Wynne, 1992).…”