- Introduction: America’s Peculiar Institution
- 1. Declaring Judicial Independence
- 2. Judicial Challenges in the Early Republic
- 3. Judicial Elections as Separation of Powers
- 4. Panic and Trigger
- 5. The American Revolutions of 1848
- 6. The Boom in Judicial Review
- 7. Reconstructing Independence
- 8. The Progressives’ Failed Solutions
- 9. The Great Depression, Crime, and the Revival of Appointment
- 10. The Puzzling Rise of Merit
- Epilogue: Judicial Plutocracy after 1980
- Conclusion: Interests, Ideas, and Judicial Independence
- Appendix A: Judicial Elections Timeline
- Appendix B: State Supreme Court Cases Declaring State Laws Unconstitutional
- Appendix C: Total Reported Cases by Decade (on Westlaw and Lexis)
- Appendix D: State Judicial Review, 1780–1864
- Appendix E: Subject Matter of State Supreme Court Cases of Judicial Review
- Appendix F: States Adopting and Rejecting Rylands
- Appendix G: Timeline for the Adoption of Merit Selection
- Appendix H: Partisan Balance during Merit Campaigns: Judicial Independence as Partisan Strategy
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- Index


The People’s Courts
Pursuing Judicial Independence in America
Product Details
HARDCOVER
$43.00 • £37.95 • €39.95
ISBN 9780674055483
Publication Date: 02/27/2012
Awards & Accolades
- 2009 Cromwell Dissertation/Article Prize, American Society for Legal History, awarded for the dissertation version of this book