Transcending the Domestic–International Divide in the Study of Judicial Behaviour

Abstract

Abstract Over the past three decades, international courts have proliferated and increasingly produced judgments with considerable economic, social, and political consequences. Scholarly studies have boomed in tandem with this growing influence. This chapter investigates to what extent research on judicial behaviour is becoming comparative not only across countries and over time but also across the domestic-international level. First, the chapter takes a bird’s-eye view of the literature on judicial behaviour by conducting a bibliometric analysis. Second, the chapter reviews in more depth the research on judicial autonomy at the international level and finds that scholars of judicial behaviour are not writing in one coherent literature. There are distinct divisions between the US judicial politics literature and research on comparative and international courts. The overall trend is also not pointing towards convergence. That said, the authors’ reading of the literature on international judicial autonomy shows that important recent work seamlessly integrates research on domestic and international courts. These studies serve as exemplary of how scholars of domestic and international courts can gain an additional level of comparison by building on each other’s work.