| Volume 29, Number 2, July 2006 |
Committee
Assignment Politics in the U.S. House of Representatives, Scott A. Frisch and Sean
Q. Kelly, University of Oklahoma Press, 2006, ISBN 0806137207, $55.00,
cloth, 416 pages.
Committee
Assignment Politics in the U.S. House of Representatives is an empirical
powerhouse of a book about the factors that determine how Members of
Congress are placed on standing committees. Frisch
and Kelly tackle a critical question of power in legislative
organization and decision-making. After
all, the heart of a legislature is its committee system. Committees
are where policy is crafted and where members can impact the content of
bills. Moreover, since some committees are
more desirable than others, there is a scarcity of prestige slots for
the membership of 435 members. How does the
process of assigning members to committees work and what factors explain
outcomes? To answer these questions, the
authors traveled far and wide to access the archived papers of former
members and gather what is by far the most systematic body of evidence
on committee assignments. Prior to this
landmark work, scholars often inferred members' desires by correlating
typologies of committees with assumptions about member motivations. Moreover, everyone studied the Democrats, who
were typically in the majority, and not the Republicans. Frisch
and Kelly fix virtually all of the empirical shortcomings in the
literature. They furnish evidence that
includes member requests and committee assignment
outcomes, and they have full analyses for both political parties. Perhaps more important than this gargantuan
set of committee assignment data, by having their conceptual house very
much in order, the authors furnish a thorough theoretical framework with
which to analyze all the evidence.
Chapter 1 begins with an
interesting case example about Congressman Henry Waxman of California
and the initial committee requests he made to Speaker Carl Albert. As Waxman's motivations did not track with
traditionally salient issues of his constituency, but rather with his
own interest in making good policy, the authors use the case to bring
into question the scholarly conventional wisdom that members seek
assignments with reelection foremost in their minds. They
adeptly follow up the case with a discussion of member motivations and
then logically proceed to present their theoretical framework. The balanced framework incorporates
explanations from distributive, informational and partisan theory. Chapter 1 finishes with a description of the
research design, which is wide-ranging and suitable for testing the
framework. In chapter 2, the authors
provide an historical analysis of committee assignment politics over the
last 50 years, with special attention paid to the Republican process
ignored by previous researchers.
Chapters 3 through 5
examine committee assignments from the standpoint of members and their
requests. In chapter 3, the authors
conduct a content analysis of request letters submitted by members. They find that the preponderant motivations
for members are making good public policy and ambition within the
chamber. Chapter 4 utilizes quantitative
analysis to assess the relationship between constituency and committee
assignments. In chapter 5, the authors
rely on interviews with members to analyze their beliefs about the
process and the strategies they use to get what they want.
In chapters 6 through 9,
Frisch and Kelly examine committee assignments from the standpoint of
the leaders who make the decisions on the assignments. In
chapter 6, they analyze the role that the party leadership plays in the
process. They find differences in approach
between the two major parties and between individual leaders as well. Chapter 7 creatively examines the factions
that exist in the Republican Committee on Committees by utilizing
individual votes of the committee about member committee assignments. In chapter 8, the authors analyze variation in
member success in requests and chapter 9 looks for differences by gender
and race.
This book is strong for
two main reasons. First, the body of
evidence is spectacular. The authors are to
be commended for tracking all of this evidence down at countless numbers
of congressional archives around the United States (see acknowledgments). The major addition here is the systematic
analysis of Republican committee placements as well as Democratic ones. Toward that end, the second main strength of
the book is the finding that parties approach committee assignments
quite differently. The shortcomings are
practically non-existent. As mentioned
above, the theoretical framework is nicely thorough. The
downside is that it comes across at first as a "kitchen sink" approach. I was a bit overwhelmed by the figure
describing their framework (16), which contains long lists of factors
within topical groupings of the committee assignment process. Upon closer reading, however, I learned that
some of the lists are beyond the scope of the study and the authors do
endeavor to provide some parsimony at least in the coaching of their key
findings on party differences. Committee
Assignment Politics is a book that even the
most senior of legislative scholars will learn from and which I highly
recommend to all students and scholars of congressional politics.
Glen S. Krutz
Associate Director of the
Carl Albert Center
and
Associate Professor of Political Science
The
University of Oklahoma
The
Concept of Constituency: Political Representation, Democratic
Legitimacy, and Institutional Design, Andrew Rehfeld, Cambridge
University Press, 2005, ISBN 0521849845, $75.00, cloth, 259 pages.
Andrew Rehfeld's work attempts to address contemporary problems
associated with representative government and democracy. He seeks to
understand three basic questions: "why do democratic governments define
political representation by where people live," if these districts based
on where people live are appropriate or adequate for representative
democracy, and how we might then be led to endorse a different system
of representation that "randomly assigns citizens to single-member,
national electoral constituencies in which they remain for life" (4).
These questions lead to focus specifically on the concept and
representation functions of electoral constituencies. Rehfeld argues
that while questions of representation and electoral systems are
important aspects of study – he is more concerned with how
constituencies affect "the legitimacy of a political regime" (7). In a
sense, Rehfeld is taking the study of representation a step back, to a
broader and harder question to answer.
Rehfeld
approaches his study of electoral constituencies in three separate
ways. First, he attempts to refocus the common conceptualization of
constituencies away from constituencies as electoral mechanisms or "at
the level of the voting booth" (30) and instead relies on political
theory to reach a definition that encompasses dimensions of homogeneity,
stability, and voluntariness (39). Next, the author moves to defining
the historical context that drove the emergence of territorial
constituencies in the United States. Rehfeld argues that the Founders
believed (more implicitly than explicitly) that territory was the "only
way to enable other philosophical principles of democratic political
representation" (116), communication between constituents, communication
with the legislature and elected representatives, and as "tangible
moments of consent" in a representative system of government (140).
Finally, Rehfeld attempts to study constituencies through a more
normative lens. He first addresses some of the problems associated with
the current system of territorial constituencies by comparing them with
some of the justifications and promises the current system has heralded
or been supported by. He then turns to his own normative exercise and
provides an alternative conception of electoral constituencies, one that
is "randomized, national, (and) permanent" (177). The result of such a
new system would be a movement to the center or modification for both
elected officials and national policies. His final
chapter is a more playful exercise to illustrate the possible results of
this new system.
Rehfeld's
work offers new insights and asks important questions regarding our
conceptualization of electoral constituencies and the role they play in
a representative system of government. His critique of the modern system
is certainly timely and illustrates some of the important difficulties
that arise out of a system defined by territory. While his normative
alternative is interesting, the questions Rehfeld raises concerning our
conceptualization of electoral constituencies and their normative
consequences are the most compelling aspects of the book.
Kate
E. Carney
Carl
Albert Graduate Fellow
Ph.D.
student of Political Science
University of Oklahoma
Legislative Drafter's Deskbook: A Practical Guide, Tobias A. Dorsey; contributing author: Clint Brass, 2006, TheCapitol.Net, ISBN 1587330156, $150.00, cloth, 648 pages.
Legislative
Drafter's Deskbook: A Practical Guide presents legislative
scholars, legislation drafters, and quite frankly anyone interested in
the construction of statute with a meticulous exploration of the
planning and thought processes that must occur in order for clear,
understandable laws to be written. Dorsey
accomplishes his desired missions of providing practical advice to
drafters and interesting insight to scholars (and normal people) on the
drafting process. The author carries the
reader on a journey that begins with understanding the essence of "Being
a Drafter" and ends with advice on "Working in, and Working with, the
Executive Branch." This work serves as a
thoughtful reference guide for drafters, and an intriguing behind the
scenes look at the drafting process for the rest of us.
Although this book is written from the perspective of legislative drafting for the United States Congress, it seems mostly generalizable to all forms of legislative drafting. In fact, only the final chapter ("Working in, and Working with, the Executive Branch") strictly applies to drafting for the Congress. Additionally, only two chapters (chapter 6, Writing Effectively, and chapter 8, Using the Right Style) focus directly on the task of writing legislation. The clear focus of the author's advice is the various issues a drafter must think about and anticipate in the preparation to draft legislation.
Understanding why and how
policies were made (chapter 2), anticipating potential problems and
unintended effects (chapters 3, 4, 9), and
precise wording and sequencing (chapters 5 and 7) are clearly the topics
of emphasis, and seemingly the most important steps in the drafting
process. This focus on the mental aspect
of drafting, opposed to the physical writing, allows the author to
successfully achieve his goal of providing a text that is supplemental
to the drafting skills acquired via experience. The
discussion provided is not theoretical, but simply advice derived
through the exploration of typical drafting projects.
Dorsey's
goal of practicality is illuminated not only via the advisory nature of
this work, but through the applicable nature of the appendices. In these sections, Dorsey provides the
reader with specific real-life examples of drafting and drafting styles
(appendices 4-8, 10, 11), as well as a list of resources that could be
useful to drafter's or curious readers (appendices 1-3, 9). These
useful inclusions provide readers with a more detailed peek into the
topics presented in the main text, and clearly enhance the value of the
previous discussions.
Overall the author
produces an informative and effective work that provides readers with a
detailed introduction to the thoughtfulness and importance of drafting
legislative statutes. This work is so
highly informative to someone foreign to the drafting process, that it
must also stand a useful daily guide and reminder to actual drafters. The Legislative Drafter's Deskbook clearly has a place on
the bookshelves of practitioners and scholars alike.
Curtis Ellis
Carl Albert Graduate
Fellow
Ph.D. student of
Political Science
University of Oklahoma
The Macro Politics of Congress, Edited by E. Scott Adler
and John S. Lapinski, Princeton University Press, 2006, ISBN 0691121591,
$19.95, paper, 263 pages.
The
Macropolitics of Congress, edited by Adler and
Lapinski, contains a series of essays that attempt to extend political
science inquiry beyond micro-level analyses of legislative behavior or
studies of legislative production to larger questions that address the
effects of institutional arrangements such as divided government on
long-term policy outcomes. The articles
contained in the volume start a conversation between micro-level and
macro-level analyses, both of which tend to assess the effects of
similar independent variables (party organization, public opinion and
elections, separation of powers issues, federalism, etc.) but in
conjunction with different dependent variables (discrete individual
behavior vs. long-term collective behavior).
There has been little
movement toward macro-level analysis of Congress, suggest Adler and
Lapinski, since Cooper and Brady (1981, APSR:75) urged scholars to
address the effects of cultural and institutional evolutions on policy
outcomes across time. Authors in this book
offer theories that employ new-institutional approaches and question the
role of parties (Krehbiel, chapter 1), and use formal modeling to assess
the effects bureaucratic capacity and legislative expertise on
legislative output (Huber and McCarty, chapter 2). Macro-level
representation issues are addressed from the perspective of public
opinion (Erikson, MacKuen and Stimson, chatper 3), and in relation to
the constraining effects imposed by existing institutional arrangements
(Katznelson and Lapinski, chapter 4). Theories
of legislative productivity across time are addressed in terms of
changes to the legal status quo imposed by legislation (Heitshusen and
Young, chapter 5), and as related to the effects of partisan control on
size or scope of political agendas (Shipan, chapter 6). Several
articles address policy change as a function of a principle-agent
relationship between Congress and bureaucracy (Freedman and Cameron,
chapter 7), through the joint influence of Congress and the courts on
bureaucratic decisions (Canes-Wrone, chapter 8), and in relation to the
joint and divided partisan control of the legislative and executive
branches (Adler and Leblang, chapter 9). Finally,
Mayhew addresses the effect of "crisis" on policy status quos and
partisanship in Congress (chapter 10) and Brady discusses the use of
rational choice theory and historical institutionalism for the purposes
of addressing macropolitical issues (chapter 11).
As "the institution where the collective choice of the nation is forged into outcomes" (3), and where micro-level behavior has already received detailed study, Congress provides an appropriate focal point for studies that shift research foci to macropolitics and policy. This edited volume takes an important step in addressing the "big" issues of policy change and evolution in the Congressional context.
Walter Wilson
Carl Albert Graduate
Fellow
Party Wars: Polarization and the Politics of
National Policy Making, Barbara Sinclair,
University of Oklahoma Press, 2006, ISBN 0806137797, $19.95, paper, 448
pages.
Party
Wars: Polarization and the Politics of National Policy Making is the tenth volume in
the Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series, a biennial function
of The Carl Albert Center at the University of Oklahoma. Written by
Barbara Sinclair, a renowned congressional scholar, Party Wars draws upon Sinclair's
hundreds of interviews gathered over numerous experiences on Capitol
Hill as well as her other well known research and literature.
Party Wars opens with the strange
and bewildering account of Chairman Bill Thomas' "call to the police"
and Rep. Pete Stark's "fruitcake" taunt during a Ways and Means
Committee meeting in July 2003. This immature, if not humorous, episode
seemed to be the perfect juxtaposition with "textbook" Congress of
previous decades. After all, this is the Congress of the United
States
here, not a law enforcement-needed emergency!
From this opening
vignette, Sinclair provides an historical
account of Congress of old, during the days of
Rayburn and Martin, when many were lamenting the insipid nature of
parties and the need for stronger, more coherent ideologies and
cohesion. From there, Sinclair discusses this historically developing
partisanship, the sources of the ideological shift to the right by the
Republican Party (the growth of right-wing intellectuals and the
"religious right"), the growing partisanship within the Democratic
caucuses during their forty-year reign, and the growing bombast of the
Republican minority. These forces help Sinclair to explain contemporary
events: unorthodox lawmaking in both chambers, strained legislative and
executive relations, and greater symbols of the nefarious effects of
extreme partisanship (greater public relations wars, greater
polarization of "the National Political Community").
Much of the ground
covered here will be familiar to many within the political science
community, and some may be disappointed she does not have more normative
recommendations to suggest (especially considering Sinclair does disagree with Fiorina and
believes the public is more divided than he
would allow). However, what gives Sinclair's account its distinctiveness
is its breadth and depth combined with its readability. Sinclair is not
afraid to accessibly use both qualitative and quantitative methods, as
well as narrative accounts from other sources to explain this forty-year
phenomenon.
Many factors, including
DW-nominate scores, the South, redistricting, Republican Party
transformations, and the Watergate "freshmen" are all analyzed to
measure their impact on the growth of party polarization (surprisingly,
Sinclair finds redistricting not to have as much explanatory power as
many have thought). Their effects on deliberation are discussed in five
out of the last six chapters. Most would agree that the increasing use
of filibuster threats and "holds", the bending if not breaking of
traditional legislative norms and rules (three hour "fifteen minute"
votes), and the increasing use of restrictive rules are not beneficial
for legislative processes simply because they reduce information
dissemination, comity, trust, and the potential for compromise. But, as
Sinclair points out in her conclusion, this status quo does not have to
continue to be the norm. Partisanship does not have to equal a breakdown
in deliberation. After all, as APSA longed for years ago in its
well-known
report, clearly positioning and articulating parties give voters clear
choices and at least make representation a more accurate and accountable
process.
Sinclair
provides a few deliberative recommendations, but leaves the reader to
surmise because, as she writes,
"Democracy, no matter how structured, cannot guarantee good policy
outcomes, for any individual or for the polity as a whole, much less
ones that we all find pleasing. It does allow us, if we are willing to
take the time and make the effort, to exert some influence over those
outcomes." Sinclair's work is an excellent account for understanding how
current politics evolved to the place it is today. Despite the fact that
it simply wastes so much precious time (that could be spent learning,
debating, deliberating, compromising, sharing, listening, observing),
blind and shallow partisan polarization is a trend that does not appear
to be dissipating anytime soon. Nevertheless, we do have "influence over
those outcomes." Sinclair's work is a productive place to start in
understanding and affecting such outcomes.
Matt Field
Carl Albert Graduate
Fellow
Ph.D. student of
Political Science
University of Oklahoma
Paul Wellstone: The Life
of a Passionate Progressive, Bill Lofy, University of
Michigan Press, 2005, ISBN 0472031198, $19.95, paper, 167 pages.
Paul
Wellstone: The Life of a Passionate Progressive is an engaging and
fast-paced account of the life and service of former Senator Paul
Wellstone (D-MN). Wellstone, a political science
professor-turned-Senator, was a famous idealist known for his oratory,
commitment to principle, and courage in the face of long odds before
tragically losing his life in a pre-debate plane crash during his third
Senate campaign.
Fortunately,
Lofy, who had met one of Wellstone's sons in college and ended up
working for the Senator a total of five years over the course of a
decade, provides a full portrait of the sometimes-too-impulsive former
collegiate wrestler-turned-advocate of "conflict" and "organizing the
disenfranchised"
(taken from the work of Saul Alinsky, author of the 1971 work, Rules
for Radicals).
Lofy recounts the details of how Wellstone learned much from his
ill-conceived 1982 run for State Auditor and from his initial willingness
to buck senatorial courtesies and plain politeness during his early days
and months in the Senate (the picture is included of Wellstone giving
icy-stared Vice-President Quayle an
audio tape of Minnesotan opposition to impending military conflict in
Kuwait at his swearing-in ceremony!).
The
origins and consequences of these actions are important in
understanding the motivations and characteristics of the greater
achievements of the man. A widely popular college professor and most
unlikely challenger-turned-incumbent (he was the only challenger to
defeat a Senate incumbent in 1990), Wellstone's efforts
on behalf of cafeteria workers (the occupation his mother held),
small-farmers (who impeded utility workers with baseball bats and
manure!), mental health patients (working with an ideological foe,
Senator Pete Domenici, who would nonetheless publicly break down upon
Wellstone's death), and veterans, to name a few, are all recounted in
this excellent biographical narrative.
Wellstone
was a man of conviction, courage, and color. An unconventional teacher
and scholar, he only earned tenure after enduring a bruising
administrative battle that involved student protests and revelations of
improper administrative conduct. As one of four delegates to the
Democratic National Convention in1984, Wellstone refused to support
native-son Mondale and instead insisted on supporting symbolic candidate
Jesse Jackson. Days after giving the audio tape to Vice-President
Quayle, Mondale gave an infamous press conference in front of the
Vietnam Memorial speaking against the soon-to-be Gulf War. Yet,
Wellstone learned to appreciate Mondale,
and, after apologizing, was able to earn the respect and trust of the
veterans' community in Minnesota. When former
Senator Boschwitz tried to defeat Wellstone again in 2000 and win his
seat back by blindly accusing Wellstone of burning an American flag as a
college student, his attack went nowhere.
Lofy's
work is well-written and well-researched, including not just admirers
of Wellstone but also many of Wellstone's ideological opposites who
nonetheless came to enjoy their professional and personal relationships
with the man. Useful for studying campaigns, interest-group behavior, or
institutional norms, Paul Wellstone would be an enlightening,
informative, and inspiring read for all students of American politics.
Matt Field
Carl Albert Graduate
Fellow
Ph.D. student of
Political Science
University of Oklahoma
The
Power of the People: Congressional Competition, Public Attention, and
Voter Retribution, Shean M. Theriault, The Ohio State University
Press, 2005, ISBN 0814251404, $24.95, paper, 166 pages.
The
Power of the People addresses one of the most
asked questions in American government: Do
Representatives fear retribution from constituencies of legislative
missteps, and do constituencies punish such members for such missteps? Theriault provides a detailed exploration of
centuries of American politics to present a qualified answer of – Yes,
sometimes. The "two faces of democratic accountability"
are examined via detailed historical and statistical analysis (5). Four distinct policy issues, that have
presented a similar problem to legislators throughout time, are examined
against three well-developed hypotheses.
As described by the
author, the problem examined arises when the interests of constituents
and the interests of legislators are in direct conflict. In
order to address this issue, the author chooses to study four specific
policy cases that have arisen on multiple occasions since the nineteenth
century. The Pendleton Act of 1883 (the
demise of the spoils system), Congressional pay raises, campaign finance
reform, and Congressional term limits are the legislative sagas examined
utilizing Theriault's three hypotheses: the Competition Hypothesis, the
Attention Hypothesis, and the Retribution Hypothesis (6). These issues
are chosen because the elements of electoral competition, public
pressure, and possible voter retribution were all present during the
various political climates of the times (7).
Although the final
results of this exploration do not leave us with any staunch rules of
thumb for voter retribution and the power of the people, Theriault
provides clear evidence that democratic accountability has been and is
present in the American political system. However,
as the author notes, this is social science – and the hope for
developing static rules regarding dynamic processes is unrealistic (136). With that in mind the evidence presented by
this entertaining examination of democratic accountability shows that the
people "on
occasion, constrain their representatives" (136). Consistent
throughout the case studies presented, appears the notion that when the
public is paying attention, representatives will most likely abandon
their personal preferences and yield to their constituents' desires
(138). However, when politicians do not
fear voter retribution, they will forego public desires (138). Yet if unexpected punishment does indeed
occur, then typically substantive reform will follow (138).
Overall this work is a great
contribution to the literature on democratic accountability for
legislative studies. The detailed care
utilized in developing the presented theories and analysis is evident. Theriault carefully eliminates the problem of
identifying dynamic constituent interests by thoughtfully choosing to
examine cases where the interests of representatives and constituents
are clearly defined, easily identified, and obviously in opposition. In addition, the author clearly qualifies and
places the results within the existing body of literature in the
discipline without over generalizing the conclusions. The
Power of the People is an excellent
contribution to legislative studies and a must read for scholars of
democratic accountability.
Curtis Ellis
Carl Albert Graduate
Fellow
Ph.D. student of
Political Science
University of Oklahoma
Ultimately
grounded in concern for judicial independence as instrumental in
preserving the rule of law, When Courts & Congress Collide explores the relationship
between Congress and the federal judiciary. In
an account that provides necessary and quite interesting historical
background, Professor Geyh concisely traces the relationship from the
Framers to date and concludes that the "dynamic equilibrium" that has
heretofore characterized the relationship may be breaking down. More a story of institutional development than
a story of conflict, When Courts & Congress Collide offers its readers an
improved understanding of the current judicial landscape: where
we are; how we got here; and what we stand to lose.
The book's political
leanings are at times only too apparent, but they do not for long
detract from the argument made. The
dissenting opinions of Justice Scalia are tagged as one of the most
immediate threats to the public's faith in the courts. Similarly,
when it comes to presidents using judicial appointments to shape the
courts and perhaps foster an ideological legacy, it is an affliction
that has seemingly touched only recent Republican presidents. That said, there is in its pages much to be
applauded and enjoyed.
The book is perhaps
strongest in unpacking the appointments process. By
first reviewing the rise and fall of Congress's tools to control
directly the judiciary (impeachment, jurisdiction, and court size), the
increasing importance of the appointments process as a tool to control
indirectly the judiciary becomes clear. Impeachment,
court packing and unpacking, and other direct moves on the judiciary
require bicameral action. Bicameral action
requires greater consensus, greater political resources, and a just
plain greater time commitment away from other legislative pursuits. Because the appointments process requires only
the action of the Senate, it is much easier to sustain a contentious
process. Whereas norms of customary
independence have been nurtured and maintained when it comes to issues
of impeachment, court size, and jurisdiction, no such norms of political
restraint have taken root in the appointments process.
But even in explaining
that the appointments process has always been political and partisan
(notwithstanding the hope of the Framers that appointments would be
determined based upon a nominee's qualifications), When Courts &
Congress Collide identifies a critical
change in the political focus of appointments. No
longer limited to rewarding or punishing a president or nominee for
past behavior, today's appointments face pitched battles over ideology
and what that nominee's future decisions will be.
Notwithstanding the
book's efforts to portray a dynamic equilibrium between Congress and the
courts to which both sides contribute, a theme of dominating
self-restraint by Congress vis-a-vis the courts runs throughout the book. While the court may at times move to appease
or nurture its relationship with Congress, there is at the end of the
day the reality that Congress possesses the institutional and
constitutional power (but apparently not the political will) to greatly
control the judiciary. For its part, the
book provides a picture of dynamic equilibrium that is not just
descriptive, but also normative. The book
does not hide its belief that the two-way interbranch forces of motion
ought continue.
The book's structure and
sequence contribute to its persuasiveness. Chapter
1 covers the origins of American judicial independence and
accountability. Chapter 2 reviews the
emergence and strengthening of "customary independence" on the part of
Congress. Chapter 3 witnesses the
experience of impeachment as a tool to control judicial decision making. Chapter 4 traces the development of the
appointment process as a prospective tool with which to control future
judicial decision making. Chapter 5 moves
away from an otherwise Congress perspective to consider the
contributions of the courts to preserving "customary independence." Tools used by the courts to preserve and
encourage customary independence include conflict avoidance,
acquiescence to Congress in key cases, and deferential self-governance. Finally, the book concludes (chapter 6) with a
look at the "dynamic equilibrium" that characterizes the relationship
between Congress and the federal judiciary.
Making a strong argument
that our independent judiciary derives more from intrabranch and
interbranch norms than from the text of the Constitution, the book
raises some well-timed concerns about the withering of these norms. Concerning Congress, Professor Geyh points to
the damaging effects of partisanship that have supported "an ideological
holy war over the future of the federal judiciary" (221). Concerning
the courts, he sees among recent Supreme Court decisions a move from
conflict avoidance to conflict seeking and correctly anticipates that
Congress may increasingly act to shift the balance between judicial
independence and judicial accountability in favor of the latter at the
expense of the former.
When Courts &
Congress Collide offers an interesting
account of the relationship between two branches of government. The story that unfolds in its pages is
interesting and provocative.
Martin Hanifin
Carl Albert Graduate
Fellow
Ph.D. student of
Political Science
