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The Russian legal system has a spotty reputation, both domestically and internationally. The distrust stems from well-publicized cases involving enemies of political or economic elites in which the outcome in favor of the elites is obviously predetermined. Coexisting with such cases are millions of mundane cases in which judges adhere scrupulously to the statutory law. This sort of legal dualism is not uncommon under authoritarianism. Russia’s constitution reflects this dualism. Its relevance to daily life and its capacity to constrain arbitrary state actions is questionable. Adopted in 1993, it proclaims Russia to be a state governed by the rule of law and includes a chapter with a comprehensive list of rights guaranteed to citizens which cannot be changed without convening a constitutional assembly. The constitutional court, which is a post-Soviet institutional innovation, is charged with ensuring compliance with the constitution. Amending the constitution requires consent from both the national legislature and two-thirds of the regional legislatures. The electoral dominance of the political party associated with Vladimir Putin has made this seemingly high threshold for amendments easily achievable. He has bent the constitution to his political will with multiple amendments, culminating in a set of over 100 amendments approved in 2020. The use of courts by Russian citizens and businesses has increased steadily during the post-Soviet period. As a rule, disputes are handled quickly and inexpensively. Even so, litigating is not the preferred option; Russians typically end up in court only when informal negotiations fail. As a rule, they go to court to solve practical problems rather than to advance issues of principle. The courts’ dockets are dominated by civil claims, such as family law disputes and various forms of debt collection. The straightforward nature of the procedural rules allows many litigants to represent themselves. In criminal cases, which are fewer, defendants are required to be represented by a licensed attorney (advokat). The state covers the cost of legal representation for the poor. Litigants who are dissatisfied with the outcomes of their cases can pursue appeals, culminating in the Russian Supreme Court. Citizens who believe that officials have violated their rights can pursue their claims in the stand-alone constitutional court, whose decisions serve as binding precedent. The post-Soviet era has witnessed wide ranging reforms to the legal system. Some were aimed at depoliticizing the courts. Judges are selected by a professional council dominated by judges that assesses candidates’ knowledge of law and appropriateness for the bench. They enjoy life tenure, subject to removal for cause—a process that is occasionally hijacked to remove judges who fail to toe the line in political cases. The reforms also sought to ease the heavy workload of judges by introducing a form of plea bargaining in criminal cases and opening the door to a type of summary judgment in civil cases in which defendants have conceded their culpability.

Criminal justice and its institutions are key objects of popular culture and attract extensive media attention. The portrayal of the justice system, its rules, professions, and institutions has been invigorated with the invention of new media technology. The authorities’ reaction to wrong doing has proven not less exciting to the audience than the criminal acts themselves. French sociologist Emile Durkheim emphasized that every member of society has an interest in social cohesion and wishes to see perpetrators appropriately punished. The media plays to this basic inclination. From the reactions of the justice system to crime, people take clues not only for its effectiveness but the public also wants to see its basic values represented in the work of officials and their decisions. Therefore, aspects of procedural and distributive justice are picked up by popular imagination and exploited to the full by media producers. Beyond recognition that media depictions of criminal justice will follow media conventions and will therefore be distorted in systematic ways, it has to be acknowledged that those representations and the expectations they formed have become a major force in society. Political repercussions and influences on how crime is dealt with are a consequence.

In early modern societies, the duty of enforcing justice was one of the principal tasks of the monarch. Judicial power could be exercised both directly by the monarch—the supreme magistrate—or by those he delegated it to—judges or his courts. In the vast territory of Portuguese America, different institutions were created to ensure access to justice, to help govern the people, to assist in long-distance administration, and to maintain control over the crown’s dominions. Ouvidorias-gerais, judges, and courts were established with their own institutional officials, intermixing lower- and higher-level jurisdictions and exercising justice over distinct territorial spaces. To understand the functioning of judicial institutions in colonial society, it is important to analyze the universe of magistrates, their careers, judicial practices, and complex relations in the social environment. Magistrates, as an important professional group recruited by the Portuguese monarchy, had multiple overseas possibilities. They could serve at the same time as representatives of royal power and allies of local groups. These men faced a colonial reality that allowed them a wide sphere of action, the exercise of a differentiated authority, and a privileged position as intermediaries between local elites and the king. Even though all magistrates were subject to the same rules of selection, recruitment, appointment, and promotion, the exercise of justice in the slaveholding society of Portuguese America demanded a great capacity for adaptation and negotiation, for the application of law in the mosaic of local judicial situations. Magistrates circulated in different spaces, creating and working in different judicial institutions in the difficult balance between theory and practice, between written law and customary law.

The American judicial system is not a static, simple, or mechanical entity. Rather, it is a complex organization that is developed and staffed in response to changing caseload and societal pressures through a process that is inherently political. The key personnel who help the judiciary function bring varied backgrounds and perspectives with them that influence the work they do. As is the case with any political system, understanding American politics and policy making requires an understanding of the judiciary’s role in the American political system. In addition, on a daily basis, courts function to resolve disputes. While most cases have little direct impact on American policy or society broadly speaking, the resolution of these cases is important to those who turn to the courts of law to resolve their disputes.

Trial court judges are often referred to as the workhorses of the judicial system. This is unsurprising given that millions of civil and criminal cases are filed and resolved in U.S. state and federal trial courts each year. Very few of these cases ever reach appellate courts, meaning that trial courts are often the first and only court with which people directly interact. At the same time, trial courts can make local and national policy, both in individual cases and in the aggregate. This important role of trial courts and their actors has not gone unnoticed by scholars across social science disciplines. One can consider trial courts in a broad sense by tracking the historical developments that led to the trial courts in the United States. As caseloads have increased, trial courts—particularly those with specialized jurisdictions—have been created out of necessity. State trial courts feature variation in their judicial selection methods, including elections and appointments. At the federal level, increased polarization has led to contentious partisan confirmation battles for federal trial court judges. Trials are a rare occurrence, with plea agreements and settlements being the most frequent methods of resolving cases. To understand trial court actor behavior, it is important to remember that state and federal trial courts sit at the bottom of their judicial hierarchies. The preferences of their hierarchical superiors, along with the presence of high trial court caseloads and the rarity of trials, rein in judges’ discretion and the potential effects of their personal characteristics and attitudes. Because of these judge constraints, actors such as prosecutors, defense attorneys, and juries play a significant role in trial court outcomes. As the literature reveals, the “repeat players” in trial courts hold significant advantages over less experienced litigants and attorneys that affect their likelihood of gaining favorable outcomes, among other things. Race and gender of these actors can have significant effects on behavior in certain types of cases. There are many hurdles that remain for scholars seeking to study trial courts. For example, state trial courts, in particular, continue to be difficult to study empirically. This is due largely to a lack of data availability. Relatedly, scholars must continue to strive to find ways to study trial court outcomes and events that do not lead to published opinions—for example settlements, plea bargains, prosecutorial declinations, and many decided motions. Each of these involves important decisions and outcomes that affect parties and may be affected by judges and lawyers.

Appellate courts are part of both federal and state judiciaries. They serve to correct lower court errors but, more importantly, serve as key policymakers in their respective jurisdictions. The U.S. Supreme Court is the court of last resort in the federal system, though the U.S. courts of appeals (the primary intermediate appellate court in the federal system) is often the last stop for any federal appeal. Both are staffed by presidential nomination coupled with senatorial confirmation. The states exhibit considerable variation in the staffing, design, and function of their appellate courts. That variation encompasses staffing via appointive, electoral, and hybrid methods, as well organizational structures that may include more than one court of last resort (though the majority of states have only one such court) and may omit an intermediate appellate court (IAC; though the majority of states have at least one such court). Scholars know a great deal about the influences on decision making in the U.S. Supreme Court. They know less but still a considerable amount about how judges on the U.S. courts of appeals and state courts of last resort make decisions. Scholarly understanding of decision making on state IACs is quite limited.