This workshop will contribute to analysis of how appellate court decisions contribute to changes in public policy. Most research concerning that issue has noted that courts are most likely to change public policy when they have other groups and powerful institutions allied with them. This project will bring multiple scholars together to consider state-level change, and allow an evaluation of how such change is implemented in a major complex policy field with multiple organizations that would resist change. It will be important to track how organizations mobilize for change, and how they respond to its potential, and whether and how politically powerful organizations mobilize for implementation. Furthermore, it will allow evaluation of policy change via the courts and potential diffusion across states. The project will link with literature in criminology as well as literature on courts and social change; in state courts, the most relevant literature has concerned school finance reform, making the project potentially broadly important in multiple subfields.
The project will contribute to the training of scholars in law and social sciences. It will also inform policymakers concerning court decisions and public policy. The project will draw together scholars closely connected to public policymakers and scholars, therefore making the realization of potential broader impacts highly likely. The policy issue is extremely important to multiple states, so the policy impact is likely to be broad.
