All Judges Are Political - Except When They Are Not ─ Acceptable Hypocrisies and the Rule of Law

"Between costly partisan judicial elections and a Supreme Court that appears frozen in an ideological 5-4 split, there has never been a more apt time to answer conclusively the question of whether judges are apolitical oracles or ideological politician. Bybee's answer---they are both---sounds at first like a discomfiting one. But in this facinating book he shows that the courts' very survival in fact rests on the white lie of this fundamental tension."---Dahlia Lithwick, Senior Editor, Slate.com

"Bybee offers a truly fresh and important response to one of the most important questions in the cultural study of law: how can law sustain its legitimacy in the face of the understanding that it is essentially political? Arguing that law's hypocrisy actually strengthens it, Bybee makes a connection to courtesy that is really quite ingenious and illuminatin. This is a wonderful new vehicle for understanding how courts work."---Austin Sarat, Amherst College

"Judicial authority is not in grave danger, at least in the terms that some alarmists imagine. In conversation with mainstream approaches to judicial practice, this remarkably original work contends that law's deceits sustain order and moderate conflict, all the while sustaining hierchy. A mojor accomplishment."---Michael W. McCann, University of Washington

The legitimacy of our courts rests on their capacity to give broadly acceptable answers to controversial questions. Yet Americans are divided in their beliefs about whether our courts operate on unbiased legal principle or political interest. Comparing law to the practice of common courtesy, Keith Bybee explains how our courts not only survive under these suspicions of hypocrisy, but actually depend on them.

Keith J. Bybee is Paul E. and the Hon. Joanne F. Alper' 72 Judiciary Studies Professor at Syracuse University College of Law. He is the editor of Bench Press: The Collision of Courts, Politics, and the Media.