The Impact of Courts on Public Management: New Insights From the Legal Literature

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This article challenges some of the accepted wisdom about the relationship between courts and public institutions. The authors raise a reasonable doubt concerning whether judges as a whole are refusing to defer to administrator’s expertise and have lost their “cloak of neutrality.” Moreover, there is evidence to conclude that judges, as a whole, are shying away from the detailed “command-and-control” approaches of the past where courts determined remedial norms, formulated comprehensive and inflexible decrees, and then occupied a substantial directive role in their implementation. At the same time, the authors find continued salience in O’Leary and Straussman’s concern regarding untested conclusions made largely in absence of empirical evidence concerning the impact of courts on public management. Implications for the education of public administration scholars and practitioners are offered.