Political Science

It is both misleading and extraordinarily ironic that courts are often treated and though of as being detached from politics and therefore insulated from the policy making process.  This is particularly true with respect to federal courts, the United States Supreme Court in particular, and there are valid reasons for these misconceptions of the courts.  First, federal judges are generally given lifetime appointments.  This is a fundamentally different type of job security than is enjoyed by members of the legislative and executive branches of government.  The lifetime appointments enjoyed by most judges in the federal court system are indeed premised in the notion that this type of job security will place federal judges above political disputes and that this separation of politics and the courts main function will encourage and allow federal judges to remain objective and impartial when hearing cases and rendering legal interpretations.  Second, with respect to both federal and state courts, there is a prevailing notion that law is fairly objective and that it can therefore be easily applied to a variety of factual circumstances.  These faulty assumptions, that judges are essentially impartial and that law is quite objective and easily applied, frequently results in the equally faulty conclusions that courts are detached from and therefore do not impact the policy making process in any substantial way.  The reality is that courts at both the federal level and at the state level can and do impact and engage in policy making to a certain extant.

The courts impact and engage in policy making in several different ways.  Some of these ways are effected directly and some are effected indirectly.  Generally speaking, it has been noted that The claim that the political role of courts is tied to structural features of the national governing coalition as a matter of historical description is incontrovertible HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod5000838247(Clayton, 2002, p. 70).  Courts impact policy making in the way that judges are selected.  This is true for courts that have elected judges and for courts that have nominated judges with lifetime appointments.  Elected judges, for example, must deeply engage in politics in order to be elected judge of a court.  The public is therefore voting on an anticipated policy-making type of judge and a failure by that judge to administer court proceedings in a certain manner will result in a new judge being elected.  Federal judges, as heated debates over nominations and confirmations clearly demonstrate, are hardly immune from politics quite the contrary, the evidence establishes that federal judges are nominated based on how politicians feel their judicial philosophies will further a certain type of public policy agenda.  Clarence Thomas was motivated in part to further the anti-abortion public policy agenda and the most recent Supreme Court Justice confirmed was expected to further a more liberal and pro-Democrat party public policy agenda.  Experts can reasonably predict how both state and federal courts will resolve a variety of legal issues this has serious implications because under the guise of impartiality, the real politicians in the executive and the legislative branches can issue vague orders and laws in ways that will force contentious issues to be resolved by politically-connected judges rather than by those politicians elected by and accountable to the people.  The courts can overturn acts of the legislature and they can define the balance of power in government.  In sum, the policy making powers of the courts are substantial and pervasive.

It has been argued with respect to the juvenile justice system, and most of the academic literature seems to substantially agree with this argument, that Policies are too often dictated by the aberrational case and controlled by the quick fixes that prosecutors and politicians propose in order to get themselves re-elected rather than upon non-political solutions HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod5001890764(Geraghty  Drizin, 1999, p. 363).  This places those people working within the juvenile justice in an extraordinarily awkward position because the juvenile justice experts are too often compelled by external factors to administer juvenile justice in a manner that they believe is inconsistent with the purpose of juvenile justice and harmful to juveniles passing through the juvenile justice system.  Some of the main complaints in this respect, as it pertains to the juvenile justice system having certain policy making roles and functions thrust upon it, relate to such issues as trying juveniles as adults and emphasizing incarceration over treatment and rehabilitation.  Rather than assuming policy making responsibility, for example, a number of state legislatures have created vague laws requiring prosecutors and judges in the juvenile justice system to determine when and how juveniles can be tried and sentenced as adults.  How these prosecutors and judges respond to this type of delegation of quasi-legislative power, in terms of creating legal precedents, constitutes an effective articulation and implementation of policy through legislative means that should be articulated and enacted by legislative means.  The juvenile justice system, like the court systems more generally, have become increasingly politicized and vested with policy making powers far beyond traditional roles and functions.

If one assumes that children are a valuable resource, that all human beings make mistakes, and that effort should be expended to preserve children as a national resource, then the juvenile justice system as it exists today must be viewed as a substantial failure.  The primary reason for this failure is that the juvenile justice system, compelled by public and political pressure, has become in many ways an administrative agency rather than a justice agency.  More specifically, as has been noted by professionals intimately involved in the juvenile justice system, The potential exists for the continuing marginalization of a segment of society with the capacity to be an asset to society and the right to be an active member of their communities HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod5035363198(Morrison  Epps, 2002, p. 229).  This marginalization is the result of an increasingly hands-off philosophy in which society and politicians would rather lock up juveniles and throw away the proverbial key than spend the time and the money in an effort to help or otherwise rehabilitate juveniles who have violated social norms.  One might fairly remove the justice reference and instead characterize these modern institutions as juvenile processing systems because that is increasingly how these systems are functioning.  Youth and society deserve more than this type of neglectful processing, treatment and rehabilitation can achieve long term benefits despite short term costs in money and time, and the staggeringly high numbers of juveniles incarcerated in both juvenile and adult facilities, when compared to other countries in the world, clearly demonstrates that the juvenile justice system is not serving its justice functions as they relate to helping steer juveniles toward more productive futures as adults.