| Abstract: | Explaining the diffusion of judicial reform policies among the American states is an elusive task. Are such policies simply part of the larger policy process revealed in the comparative state policy literature? Or b court reform a policy arena unto itself, responding to factors uniquely legal or professional in nature? Our inquiry begins with Max Weber's sociology of law from which we adopt his concept of rationalization as a schema of policy development. According to Weber, the “rationalization” of legal institutions would accompany the advancement of capitalism in modernizing nations. Thus, we might expect specific judicial reform policies expressly aimed at rationalizing the structure and process of state court systems to be closely associated with each other and with commonly accepted indicators of economic development among the states. As part of our investigation, we relate court reforms to broader policy innovations among the states, drawing on earlier “diffusion of innovations” research. Our data indicate a strong connection between judicial reform and more general patterns of innovation diffusion among the states, but provide only modest support for Weber's assertions about the rationalization of legal systems under advancing capitalism. Three of the selected reforms cluster together and are largely explainable by indicators of economic development. Two other reforms do not fit this pattern, and their “behavior” requires additional discussion and research. Thus, the diffusion of judicial reform policy is partly accounted for by factors found in explanations of general policy innovations across states, but other, as yet unidentified, factors apparently influence certain aspects of judicial reform. The connection between Max Weber's legal sociology and policy development among the American states might at first blush seem remote or tenuous. However, this article attempts to use Weber's insights into modern legal systems to (1) examine a specific area of state policy making–judicial reform–and (2) establish a connection between policy development in the court reform area and the larger literature on general policy innovation in the American states. This inquiry is inspired by the lack of theoretical integration apparent in the literature on court reform, on the one hand, and the absence of empirical analyses connecting court reform data with “diffusion of innovation” policy studies, on the other. |
