The extent to which courts meaningfully affect policy change has been the subject of heated debate among socio-legal and other public law scholars. I argue here that one key source of tension in the literature has been the lack of any clear theory of judicial power, especially in compliance and other impact studies. Indeed, many studies have conflated “impact” and power—a move that serves to confuse rather than clarify the topic. In this paper, I outline a theory of judicial power for the study of judicial impact. I then demonstrate the utility of this theory using two historical case studies. Ultimately, I argue that this theory allows for clearer and better-grounded inferences about the roles played by courts in policy and politics.

中文翻译：

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在司法影响研究中重新思考最高法院的权力

法院对政策变化产生有意义的影响的程度一直是社会法学和其他公法学者激烈争论的主题。我在这里争辩说，文献中紧张的一个关键来源是缺乏任何明确的司法权力理论，特别是在合规性和其他影响研究中。事实上，许多研究都将“影响”和权力混为一谈——此举是为了混淆而不是澄清这个话题。在本文中，我概述了一种用于研究司法影响的司法权力理论。然后，我使用两个历史案例研究证明了这一理论的效用。最后，我认为这一理论允许对法院在政策和政治中所扮演的角色进行更清晰、更有根据的推论。