Policy Making in an Independent Judiciary: The Norwegian Supreme Court

How do the justices of a nation’s highest court arrive at their decisions?

In the context of the US Supreme Court, the answer is well established: justices seek to enshrine policy preferences in their decisions, but do so in a manner consistent with ‘the law’ and in recognition that they are members of an institution with defined expectations and constraints. In other words, a justice’s behaviour is a function of motives, means, and opportunities. 

Taking Norway as a case study, this book shows that such forces are not peculiar to the decisional behaviour of American justices. Using a modified attitudinal model, the authors show how the preferences of Norway’s justices are related to their decisions, and that an understanding of judicial behaviour developed in the American judicial system is transportable to the courts of other countries. 

'With its references to the US Supreme Court and other European Supreme Courts, Policy Making in an Independent Judiciary represents the best of interdisciplinary research on courts.'
Ole Hammerslev, University of Southern Denmark & University of Oslo

Keywords: Jurisprudence, Judicialisation