Administrative “states” of judicial policy on gender-motivated violence

In what sense is the rise of the modern administrative state a catalyst for judicial policymaking? Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State (1998), Malcolm Feeley and Edward Rubin’s treatise on judicial policymaking examines this dynamic in the context of prison reform litigation carried out by US federal courts in the mid to late twentieth century. Before 1965, federal judges had not reviewed the authority of prison wardens, who under the common law oversaw the implementation of internal prison practices. This changed after a judge in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas declared conditions of overcrowding at Cummins Frame State Prison “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution.