Law Making as an Institutional Game: Who Wins and Who Loses from Judicial Reforms?

Judicial institutions are directly involved in law making and law enforcement. Their core business tightly refers to the venture, the fate, and the prospect of the law. And yet, despite numerous investigations of how far and deep courts intervene in policy making as well as how far and deep they reshape the law, very little has been revealed about the impact law making processes have on courts and more generally on the judicial system.

This book seeks to fill this gap by examining the law making process that unfolds in the context of judicial reforms. A 'reform' is meant here as an intentional change brought about in the institutional, organisational, cultural, procedural, managerial, setting where courts operate. Therefore, the book deals with 'change' of the judiciary. This change is not considered as the outcome of the reform - rather the change is considered, and accordingly conceptualised, as a process. As such, the book tells the story of the redistribution of power, resources, legitimacy, and capacity triggered by the process of the reform experienced by the judicial actors, both individual and institutional.

Theoretically, the book takes an institutionalist approach and draws on research over a 10 year period and an extensive empirical field comprising 8 EU member states. The analysis is informed by a large dataset drawn from the author's sole research along with those of two international research groups.