Phillip J. Cooper

Conflict or Constructive Tension: The Changing Relationship of Judges and Administrators

there is no more reason to presume that changing circumstances require the rescission of prior action, instead of a revision in or even the extension of current regulation. If Congress established a presumption from which judicial review should start, that presumption-contrary to petitioners view-is not against safety regulation, but against changes in current policy that are not justified by the rulemaking record.56 (Emphasis in original.) There is one final problem of what might be termed negative discretion. Administrators often argue that

Public Administration Review: The First Fifty Years

In observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the Public Administration Review (PAR), it is appropriate to examine what has made this journal so special over the years. The picture that emerges from such an assessment of the Review is that it has presented a wide range of subject matter, methodologies, and people unrivaled by any other journal in public administration or policy and perhaps by any professional journal dealing with public affairs. It is the only public affairs journal that has accepted as its primary task the challenge of bringing together virtually all of the kinds of people and interests involved in public administration. The issues it has confronted range from the contemporary to the classical; its perspectives reach from local government levels through the international; and the analytic approaches vary from survey research to technical discussions of administrative technique, to essays in public law and political theory. PARs articles have looked forward to challenges faced; back in time at the people, ideas, and events that have contributed to current conditions; and inward at the field and the society to understand both successes and unmet challenges. Just as the Review itself has from time to time reflected on the history of the field, it is fitting in this anniversary year to consider the development of PAR.

Hard Judicial Choices@@@Hard Judicial Choices: Federal District Court Judges and State and Local Officials

In controversial court cases involving civil rights, schools and housing, prison reform, and other social issues, federal district court judges are often called upon to make some of the most difficult judicial decisions. How do these cases arise? How are they prosecuted and remedies fashioned when federally protected rights are violated? How can relations between federal judges and state and local officials be improved? This book--the first to attempt to look at such cases from the judges point of view--examines some of these questions through five comparative case studies involving open housing in a Cleveland suburb, school desegregation in Detroit, mental health reform in Alabama, prison conditions in Ohio, and alleged police misconduct in Philadelphia. Cooper presents a clear overview of the remedial decree process and prefaces each of the case studies with a full chapter that sets the case in its legal, administrative, and political context. Taking a close look at the interactions between federal district court judges and state and local officials, this volume produces a model of remedial decree litigation that challenges widely held assumptions about the role of district court judges in such controversial cases.