A New Look at Public Law Adjudication: A Critical Organizational Analysis and an Israeli Test Case

Authors

Yair Sagy, University of Haifa

Abstract

The enormous legal literature on courts largely disregards the basic fact that courts are organizations. This Article seeks to fill this void by uncovering and critically exploring vital organizational dimensions of adjudication. The Article argues that harnessing insights from organizational theory to the study of courts will not only render accuracy and conceptual depth to the description of courts, but will also offer a sounder normative prescription as to their operation. The Article discusses, in particular, a leading paradigm (the "social interaction" or "attitudinal" paradigm) of organizational theory that bears on the fundamental subject of hierarchical control within the judiciary. Within the framework of this analysis, the Article considers the test-case example of the High Court of Justice of Israel ("the HCJ), a world-renowned but structurally perplexing common law public law court. The Article exposes and unpacks hierarchical, inter-court tensions that are endemic to public law adjudication, and argues that therein lies a novel explanation for the endurance of the HCJ's peculiar configuration.

Recommended Citation

Sagy, Yair (2015) "A New Look at Public Law Adjudication: A Critical Organizational Analysis and an Israeli Test Case," Florida State University Journal of Transnational Law & Policy: Vol. 24: Iss. 1, Article 3.
Available at: https://ir.law.fsu.edu/jtlp/vol24/iss1/3