When Courts Manage: Judicial "Rowing" in Desegregation Governance

Abstract

In this research I focus on courts in their roles as administrators and social policy actors. My research question is whether court administrative behavior alters policy outcomes. While Brown v. Board of Education researchers have typically explored the effectiveness of particular policy tools (e.g., busing, magnets, etc.), I focus here on the managerial and policy implications relative to how often and intensively courts use interventions. In other words, I focus on judicial administrative behavior as a possible, if partial, systematic explanation for judicial impact.

Using panel data of approximately 125 school districts, my linear findings suggest that court interventions do manifest an impact on policy. However, nonlinear models suggest that the effect of judicial behavior is bounded by degree; extreme degrees on the adjudicative/political powerbroker continuum (see Diver, 1979) may not correspond with positive policy impact. The evidence from public school desegregation suggests that when one examines the question of degree, there are circumstances when judicial behavior closer by degrees to adjudication may be more effective than judicial behavior that is closer to political exchange.

If, as many argue, the nation is as segregated now as a half-century ago, the implications of this study suggest that policy impact in this area of public governance may be related to the types of judicial behaviors used to govern desegregation policy. If the nation decides once again to revisit the present incarnation of school segregation, should federal courts be the ones to pick up the oars as they did in such cases as Missouri v. Jenkins where the court played persistent administrative role for decades? Or, should courts step back and steer, leaving particular desegregation policy choices to school administrators? Before a governance arrangement can be supported that involves extensive court intervention, it should rest on empirical evidence of how courts have "rowed" in the past. In testing a theory of impact based on the continuum between rowing and steering, I provide not only a study of interest for law and courts scholars, but broader lessons for governance that help move public administration beyond the largely dichotomous question of steering versus rowing.