Political jurisprudence is a legal theory that some judicial decisions are motivated more by politics than by unbiased judgment. According to Professor Martin Shapiro of University of California, Berkeley, who first noted the theory in 1964: "The core of political jurisprudence is a vision of courts as political agencies and judges as political actors." Legal decisions are no longer focused on a judge's analytical analysis (as in Analytical jurisprudence), but rather it is the judges themselves that become the focus for determining how the decision was reached. Political jurisprudence advocates that judges are not machines but are influenced and swayed by the political system and by their own personal beliefs of how the law should be decided. That is not to say necessarily that judges arbitrarily make decisions they personally feel should be right without regard to stare decisis. Instead they are making decisions based on their political, legal, and personal beliefs as it relates to the law. Deeply, and with more implication for the society, the decisions of the judges is not only modified from the politics, but modify itself the politics and the process of law making in a so influent way, that we can say that the policy-making is "judicialized".
Famous quotes containing the word political:
“To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of property is like cutting off the hands. To refuse political equality is like robbing the ostracized of all self-respect, of credit in the market place, of recompense in the world of work, of a voice in choosing those who make and administer the law, a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)