3 Review(s)

The judicial process is a set of interrelated procedures and roles for deciding disputes by an authoritative person or persons whose decisions are regularly obeyed. The disputes are to be decided according to a previously agreed upon set of procedures and in conformity with prescribed rules. As an incident, or consequence, of their dispute-deciding function, those who decide make authoritative statements of how the rules are to be applied, and these statements have a prospective generalized impact on the behavior of many besides the immediate parties to the dispute. Hence the judicial process is both a means of resolving disputes between identifiable and specified persons and a process for making public policies. For centuries hundreds of writers in thousands of articles and books have tried to determine what is the essence of the judicial or adjudicatory process, what distinguishes it from the legislative and administrative processes. During the last several centuries this exercise in political taxonomy has taken on special urgency and normative concerns. For under the doctrine of separation of powers it became improper for legislatures to engage in the judicial process—issuance of bills of attainder, for example—or for judges to assume functions that are thought to be within the scope of the legislative process.