Books by Patricia Sohn
Religions, 2023
The article is a preliminary effort to join neo-positive and historical institutional analysis fr... more The article is a preliminary effort to join neo-positive and historical institutional analysis from comparative politics with insights from discursive and phenomenological analysis. It highlights a message arising from a South Korean film related to moral–ethical dimensions and the implications of development policy. Taken in symbolic as well as empirical terms, the film proffers that economic development policy not attending to political institutional development—including correct institutional practices at the micro-level—is feeding Asia’s demons (e.g., asuras) rather than its forces of stability and (rational, democratic, participatory) political order. The film suggests that institutional atrophy and social decay may emerge from the breakdown of political institutions and participatory politics as a political system moves from rationalized institutions and practices into what the current work calls, “mafia politics.” Political ritual and political theatre are actively employed in the film in ritualized acts of the desecration of political order. The current work suggests that the analysis of symbolic representations relating to ritual politics and performativity (e.g., “political theatre”) located in certain art forms, such as international film, may be useful in studies of religion and politics, and in qualitative comparative political and historical institutional analysis more broadly.
ProQuest Dissertation Publishing, 2001
Patricia Woods, Courting the Court: Social visions, State Authority, and the Religious Law Confli... more Patricia Woods, Courting the Court: Social visions, State Authority, and the Religious Law Conflict in Israel. Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest Dissertation Publishing, 2001 (299 pages). Dissertation. Hardcover.
https://search.lib.umich.edu/articles/record/cdi_proquest_journals_251733670
After thirty-nine years of uneasy coexistence between Israel's civil legal system and state religious authorities, in the late 1980s the High Court of Justice (HCJ) began to challenge state rabbinical authorities in a conflict so heated that, by the mid-1990s, the President of the High Court began to receive death threats as editorials and letters in Orthodox newspapers called him a traitor to his people. Why was the HCJ able and willing to enter into this protracted, divisive conflict when it had been dramatically unsuccessful the one time it had tried to do so previously? I argue that the emergence of new, polarized social movements in the 1970s, a weakening of the Knesset after the 1977 elections, and changes in the rules of standing in the HCJ in the 1980s provided the HCJ with the opportunity to enter this conflict in a new position of strength. Social movements like the women's movement, which challenged the religious status quo, entered into an implicit alliance with the HCJ, transforming both and changing the balance of power between the HCJ and other state institutions. The HCJ made use of the opportunity afforded to it by this legal mobilization, taking up the argument brought to it by the women's movement: the women's equality argument. It combined women's equality with a positive law method it had developed in earlier years, using general equality together with administrative legality to advocate rights. In this case, it advocated women's rights in favor of citizens and against religious authorities. I argue that the HCJ's use of administrative legality, while citing British common law as its source, has more in common with the development of administrative legality (to make constitutional-type decisions) in civil law countries of continental Europe. I use multiple types of evidence—particularly informal processes—available through court battles and the extra judicial debates around those battles to triangulate my argument that the HCJ and social movements entered into an implicit alliance, interacting through the judicial community and the courtroom in Israel. These informal processes have important implications for scholars seeking to study state-society relations in other state institutions.
University of Michigan Press, 2022
This volume offers a nuanced picture of the details of specific instances of religion and politic... more This volume offers a nuanced picture of the details of specific instances of religion and politics in Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu contexts (some geographical, some thematic), broadly presenting the phenomenon of religion and politics via country and thematic case studies. Qualitative, quantitative, material, philosophical, and theological analyses draw upon social theory to show how (and why) religion matters deeply in each time and place.
The authors and contributors demonstrate that religion is a significant force that drives societies and polities around the world, and that a radical change in the Western understanding of value-driven global politics is needed. It offers new local voices that many Western audiences have not yet heard. The essays in this volume suggest the need for an appreciation of Divinity as a quintessence holding a significant place in the hearts, minds, social orders, and political organization of polities around the world.
Simone Raudino is Visiting Professor at the Kyiv School of Economics.
Patricia Sohn is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida.
https://www.press.umich.edu/11866503
State University of New York Press (SUNY), 2017
Chronicles the conflict between religious and secular forces in Israel.
In Judicial Power and Na... more Chronicles the conflict between religious and secular forces in Israel.
In Judicial Power and National Politics, Second Edition, Patricia J. Woods returns to an issue that has only grown in relevance since the first edition’s publication in 2008: the religious-secular conflict in Israel. The first edition focused on the role that courts and justices play in deeply charged political battles. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, social groups turned to the judicial arm of the state in an effort to force the state to change its laws and policies on religious personal status law, or family law. Through an extensive case study of the interactions of the women’s movement with the High Court of Justice, Woods argues that the most important determining factor explaining when, why, and how national courts enter into the world of divisive politics is found in the intellectual or judicial communities with whom justices live, work, and think about the law. The interaction among members of this community over time culminates in new legal norms. This second edition takes into account what has happened in the past decade, with public debate over religion and the state moving away from the court and into the realm of popular politics—on the Knesset floor, in the media, in shopping malls, and on the streets. Included for the first time is the dataset for the author’s national survey of women’s movement volunteers.
Patricia J. Woods is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida.
Kendall Hunt Publishing, Higher Education, 2017
An e-textbook. Addresses what was the historical core of comparative politics as it emerged and ... more An e-textbook. Addresses what was the historical core of comparative politics as it emerged and established itself as a field within the discipline of Political Science. Includes formative texts that have had a significant impact on the field of comparative politics; and case studies based upon single-case and small-N, context-driven field studies.
SUNY Press, 2008
Uses the case of Israel to examine the circumstances that lead national courts to engage heated p... more Uses the case of Israel to examine the circumstances that lead national courts to engage heated political issues.
Patricia J. Woods examines a controversial issue in the politics of many countries around the world: the increasing role that courts and justices have played in deeply charged political battles. Through an extensive case study of the religious-secular conflict in Israel, she argues that the most important determining factor explaining when, why, and how national courts enter into the world of divisive politics is found in the intellectual or judicial communities with whom justices live, work, and think about the law on a daily basis. The interaction among members of this community, Woods maintains, is an organic, sociological process of intellectual exchange that over time culminates in new legal norms that may, through court cases, become binding legal principles. Given the right conditions—electoral democracy, basic judicial independence, and some institutional constraints—courts may use these new legal norms as the basis for a jurisprudence that justifies hearing controversial cases and allows for creative answers to major issues of national political contention.
“Her study of Israeli judicial politics is shrewd, sophisticated, culturally sensitive, and historically grounded … Judicial Power and National Politics is a welcome addition to the scholarship on comparative judicial politics, and Patricia Woods is a welcome new voice in the field … The impact of her work will cut across subfields and enrich the political science discipline.” — The Law and Politics Book Review
“This well-written book makes an important contribution by pushing the analysis of the controversies surrounding judicial intervention/activism to take ideas seriously. It provides a very persuasive account of Israel’s High Court of Justice’s involvement in religious issues and the key role of the judicial community in precipitating that involvement. At the same time, Woods attends to the roles of institutional factors and social movements in facilitating the controversial rights actions/decisions of the HCJ. This book is a must read for scholars of law and politics.” — Austin Sarat, Amherst College
“The author’s notion of an extended judicial community of judges, academic lawyers, and cause lawyers is a major move forward in the ‘new institutionalism’ in the study of law and courts.” — Martin Shapiro, Boalt Law School, University of California at Berkeley
Patricia J. Woods is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida.
Mini-Symposia, Articles, Chapters, and Reviews by Patricia Sohn
E-International Relations, 2023
Scholars of religion and politics tell us that religion is not diminishing; if anything, it is ex... more Scholars of religion and politics tell us that religion is not diminishing; if anything, it is expanding in many parts of the world. The most prescient tension relating to religion for the immediate future may be, as Fox suggests, between religion and secularism; although the "clash between and within religions is ubiquitous and permeates most elements of state religion policy," globally (Fox 2015, 36). Some scholars argue that other variables (such as nationalism) may play a more significant role in wars and conflict than do battles regarding religion, philosophy, and theology (Raudino 2022, 48-49, 55, 59-60, 62), per se, or that attitudes toward political and economic variables are more significant than religiosity in defining a person's attitudes toward conflict (Tessler 2022, 40-41; Tessler and Nachtwey 1998). Still others highlight a concern with "'religionizing' politics," where religion, nationalism, and violence are likely to meet (Juergensmeyer 1996, 11; see also 5, 13, 19). Or they may outline both violent and non-violent paths in the relationship between religion and conflict, including such ecumenical measures as seeking to, "learn from their [other religions'] teachings" (Midlarsky and Lee 2022, 403, emphasis added; see also 381, 385, 394). Indeed, the resilience and resurgence of religion (Tessler 2022, 35) that has been recognized for non-Western societies may also be the case in Western countries themselves (Sohn and Raudino 2022, 19-22). Thus, as outlined below, religion matters for Western politics. But can it matter in a positive manner?
E-International Relations, 2022
E-International Relations - Articles, 2021
‘Hair’ is an historical document reminding us of divides long present in our society. We have lea... more ‘Hair’ is an historical document reminding us of divides long present in our society. We have learned a great deal in the decades since it was released.
What do Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, Edward Said, Timothy Mitchell, and the 1979 American musical film, “Hair,” share in common? They all provide us with lessons – in the case of the scholars, a few conditioned by circumstances in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – that may be useful in considering the issues of identity politics that confront us today in the public sphere with movements such as Black Lives Matter taking center stage in our political discourses, if not in our developing thoughts and ideas.
https://www.e-ir.info/2021/09/28/theatres-of-difference-the-film-hair-otherness-alterity-subjectivity-and-lessons-for-identity-politics/
Cambridge University Press, 2017
Women's movement social and political mobilization has been a central component of the religious-... more Women's movement social and political mobilization has been a central component of the religious-secular conflict in Israel. Israel is a significantly more religious nation-state, by population and in terms of several indicators of religiosity, than some portrayals suggest. The women's movement and Orthodox constituencies have made up some of the most important poles of the tensions over the place of official religion in the state as it has been meted out in the Israel High Court of Justice (HCJ).
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139565974
New York University Press, 2016
Women's movement mobilization in Israel reflects a model of social movement mobilization that has... more Women's movement mobilization in Israel reflects a model of social movement mobilization that has been used in certain nodes of mobilization in countries around the world. It reflects a different form of mobilization than seen in mass demonstrations in the historical U.S. civil rights model. It has had a significant impact on the Israeli state and society, at the level of high politics, laws, and institution building. And it has had some important effects in the international arena as well. In its more grassroots permutations, it has tended to eschew the state and publicity. It has achieved critical goals for women by following this path, whether intentional or not.
https://nyupress.org/9781479828944/
Political Research Quarterly, 2009
The articles in this minisymposium engage historicalcontextual and rational-strategic analyses t... more The articles in this minisymposium engage historicalcontextual and rational-strategic analyses to explore the sources of judicial empowerment across seven cases located in four major regions. These cases suggest that regime type is not a significant predictor of judicial empowerment. And all of these cases demonstrate that strategy plays an important role in judicial empowerment. The strategies invoked are often not based on simple interests in political power or on electoral politics and, in some cases, are not related to majoritarian institutions at all. Strategies, thus, may vary significantly by case.
In addition, in many cases, including both democratic and semiauthoritarian cases, ideas were critical factors driving judicial empowerment (Turkey, Israel, Canada, and the United Kingdom). In other cases, ideas were part of a wider set of forces driving judicial empowerment, such as the case of Spain, in which a process including opposition political parties was key. And in still other cases, ideas played a less significant role (Mexico, Chile). Strategy, in many of these cases, served ideational commitments rather than the reverse. In addition to the institutional and ideational points just mentioned, our studies suggest that judicial empowerment may be advanced by strong actors rather than weakening actors. Moreover, while rational-strategic approaches have tended to emphasize politicians’ or judges’ abilities to read the implications of current events for predicted changes in the future, our contributions highlight the importance of past experiences to the perceived interests of those who promote judicial empowerment. That is, many of our articles suggest that those who supply judicial empowerment may do so reactively, as a response to a past experiences that they want to prevent from reoccurring. And finally, our studies strongly suggest that judicial empowerment is a process that often occurs over time rather than through discrete, momentary changes. The causes of the social mobilization leading to judicial empowerment, reasons for changing positions among politicians, changing positions among judicial actors, and so on must be analyzed over time. In some cases, these analyses must address significant periods—even decades—to identify most accurately the timing, actors, institutions, and ideas at play in judicial empowerment.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1065912909350565
Special Issue, "La Justice comme espace politique. Trois études de cas: Israël, Inde, Argentine" Liora Israël, Patricia Woods, Jayanth Krishnan, Stephen Meili, Marie-Aude Beernaert, Katia Weidenfeld, Bruno Milly, and François Chazel Droit et Société, 2003
Liora Israël, Patricia Woods, Jayanth Krishnan, Stephen Meili, Marie-Aude Beernaert, Katia Weiden... more Liora Israël, Patricia Woods, Jayanth Krishnan, Stephen Meili, Marie-Aude Beernaert, Katia Weidenfeld, Bruno Milly, and François Chazel, “La justice comme espace politique. Trois études de cas: Israël, Inde, Argentine” a special issue of Droit et Société 3:55 (2003): 595-780.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-droit-et-societe1-2003-3.htm
Political Research Quarterly, 2009
ARTICLE.
The articles in this minisymposium engage historicalcontextual and rational-strategic a... more ARTICLE.
The articles in this minisymposium engage historicalcontextual and rational-strategic analyses to explore the sources of judicial empowerment across seven cases located in four major regions. These cases suggest that regime type is not a significant predictor of judicial empowerment. And all of these cases demonstrate that strategy plays an important role in judicial empowerment. The strategies invoked are often not based on simple interests in political power or on electoral politics and, in some cases, are not related to majoritarian institutions at all. Strategies, thus, may vary significantly by case. In addition, in many cases, including both democratic and semiauthoritarian cases, ideas were critical factors driving judicial empowerment (Turkey, Israel, Canada, and the United Kingdom). In other cases, ideas were part of a wider set of forces driving judicial empowerment, such as the case of Spain, in which a process including opposition political parties was key. And in still other cases, ideas played a less significant role (Mexico, Chile). Strategy, in many of these cases, served ideational commitments rather than the reverse.
In addition to the institutional and ideational points just mentioned, our studies suggest that judicial empowerment may be advanced by strong actors rather than weakening actors. Moreover, while rational-strategic approaches have tended to emphasize politicians’ or judges’ abilities to read the implications of current events for predicted changes in the future, our contributions highlight the importance of past experiences to the perceived interests of those who promote judicial empowerment. That is, many of our articles suggest that those who supply judicial empowerment may do so reactively, as a response to a past experiences that they want to prevent from reoccurring. And finally, our studies strongly suggest that judicial empowerment is a process that often occurs over time rather than through discrete, momentary changes. The causes of the social mobilization leading to judicial empowerment, reasons for changing positions among politicians, changing positions among judicial actors, and so on must be analyzed over time. In some cases, these analyses must address significant periods—even decades—to identify most accurately the timing, actors, institutions, and ideas at play in judicial empowerment.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1065912909350565
Droit et Société , 2003
Résumé
Dans quelle mesure les tribunaux peuvent-ils impulser des évolutionspolitiques importantes... more Résumé
Dans quelle mesure les tribunaux peuvent-ils impulser des évolutionspolitiques importantes par l’intermédiaire de leurs décisions? En1988, la Haute Cour de Justice israélienne a rendu deux décisionsmarquantes en faveur des droits des femmes et à l’encontre des auto-rités religieuses, conduisant à des évolutions majeures tant au plan po-litique que social. La Cour était en mesure d’engager ce conflit durabledu fait d’un climat plus général régnant dans la « communauté juridi-que ». Les
cause lawyers des mouvements sociaux proches de la gau-che faisaient partie de cette communauté qui était, avant tout, le creu-set d’où émergeait la réflexion sur les nouvelles normes. La HauteCour s’est finalement saisie de certaines requêtes pour contesterl’autonomie institutionnelle dont bénéficient les autorités religieusesen Israël.
Cause lawyering – Droit des femmes – Israël – Juristes – Religion.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-droit-et-societe1-2003-3-page-605.htm
Field Methods, 2003
Social scientists who engage in qualitative fieldwork typically follow the ethnographic model of ... more Social scientists who engage in qualitative fieldwork typically follow the ethnographic model of the single scholar in the field. We argue that collaboration in on-site participant observation is an underutilized but vital methodological tool, particularly in the case of one common form of communal conflict in the late-modern period: intense, multifocal events. At mass demonstrations, rallies with small groups of opposing forces, and other public events involving multiple actors, sights, sounds, and interactions, collaboration provides multiple perspectives in a given research moment that one researcher cannot, by definition, experience and observe alone. By joining forces, two researchers may exploit variations in their physical vantage points, disciplinary training, range of area knowledge, and personal background (including gender, ethnicity, religion, and class) to produce more accurate and more meaningful studies. We support our claims with evidence from our own impromptu on-site collaboration in the case of a women's prayer session at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in June 2000. By Steven Mazie and Patricia Woods (e.g., Patricia Sohn)
Studies in Law, Politics and Society, 2008
The traditional and most common conception of cause lawyers has viewed them as necessarily opposi... more The traditional and most common conception of cause lawyers has viewed them as necessarily oppositional to the state, leftist, and, at best, transgressive. This conception is significant to our analysis because of its tendency to treat “the state” as a rather singular arena of power – an “it” – rather than a multi-dimensional entity made up of competing institutions and personnel. Following work on the disaggregated and embedded state, we suggest that conflict and competition among state institutions and state personnel allow cause lawyers and state actors to engage in mutually-beneficial action in service of their agendas. Litigation has important benefits for both cause lawyers and state actors: within the arena of law, processes that usually require the backing of large constituencies in the context of majoritarian institutions require, instead, convincing legal arguments. We briefly present evidence from two highly disparate cases of similar processes of interaction among cause lawyers and state actors in Vermont and Israel, which we believe indicates that this type of interaction is far from idiosyncratic.
Citation
Woods, P.J. and Barclay, S.W. (2008), "Cause lawyers as legal innovators with and against the state: Symbiosis or opposition?", Sarat, A. (Ed.) Studies in Law, Politics and Society (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 45), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 203-231.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(08)45006-8
Political Research Quarterly, 2009
In the Israeli case, judicial empowerment has come primarily through judicial initiative rather t... more In the Israeli case, judicial empowerment has come primarily through judicial initiative rather than emerging from majoritarian institutions or strategic considerations relating to electoral politics. Justices with deep commitments to political-liberal rights engaged in a decades-long process of entrenching a political-liberal rights regime through jurisprudence. At the heart of this sea change in Israeli politics was a shift in ideas.
Israel Studies Forum, 2004
Rather than being seen as a foreign import, the Israeli women's movement should be understood as ... more Rather than being seen as a foreign import, the Israeli women's movement should be understood as an authentic, domestic women's movement with a range of specific identity politics and common concerns, including violence against women.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41804936 by Patricia Woods (e.g., Sohn)
Journal of Power, Politics & Governance, 2015
Argues that the cultural expectations of local populations in the Middle East and North Africa (M... more Argues that the cultural expectations of local populations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regarding their political institutions and governance clashed with early 20th century European expectations of the same. Moreover, the MENA experience of secular regimes in the 20th century was predominated by an authoritarian version of secularism, making local populations suspicious of arguments favoring secular regimes. These tensions emerged most forcefully a century later in the Arab Spring. Suggests policy attention to the cultural expectations of local populations regarding political institutions and governance should find local regimes, such as Turkey, which have the advantage of local knowledge and ability to mediate such norms with institution-building efforts. Institution-building must include significant attention to practices.
Uploads
Books by Patricia Sohn
https://search.lib.umich.edu/articles/record/cdi_proquest_journals_251733670
After thirty-nine years of uneasy coexistence between Israel's civil legal system and state religious authorities, in the late 1980s the High Court of Justice (HCJ) began to challenge state rabbinical authorities in a conflict so heated that, by the mid-1990s, the President of the High Court began to receive death threats as editorials and letters in Orthodox newspapers called him a traitor to his people. Why was the HCJ able and willing to enter into this protracted, divisive conflict when it had been dramatically unsuccessful the one time it had tried to do so previously? I argue that the emergence of new, polarized social movements in the 1970s, a weakening of the Knesset after the 1977 elections, and changes in the rules of standing in the HCJ in the 1980s provided the HCJ with the opportunity to enter this conflict in a new position of strength. Social movements like the women's movement, which challenged the religious status quo, entered into an implicit alliance with the HCJ, transforming both and changing the balance of power between the HCJ and other state institutions. The HCJ made use of the opportunity afforded to it by this legal mobilization, taking up the argument brought to it by the women's movement: the women's equality argument. It combined women's equality with a positive law method it had developed in earlier years, using general equality together with administrative legality to advocate rights. In this case, it advocated women's rights in favor of citizens and against religious authorities. I argue that the HCJ's use of administrative legality, while citing British common law as its source, has more in common with the development of administrative legality (to make constitutional-type decisions) in civil law countries of continental Europe. I use multiple types of evidence—particularly informal processes—available through court battles and the extra judicial debates around those battles to triangulate my argument that the HCJ and social movements entered into an implicit alliance, interacting through the judicial community and the courtroom in Israel. These informal processes have important implications for scholars seeking to study state-society relations in other state institutions.
The authors and contributors demonstrate that religion is a significant force that drives societies and polities around the world, and that a radical change in the Western understanding of value-driven global politics is needed. It offers new local voices that many Western audiences have not yet heard. The essays in this volume suggest the need for an appreciation of Divinity as a quintessence holding a significant place in the hearts, minds, social orders, and political organization of polities around the world.
Simone Raudino is Visiting Professor at the Kyiv School of Economics.
Patricia Sohn is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida.
https://www.press.umich.edu/11866503
In Judicial Power and National Politics, Second Edition, Patricia J. Woods returns to an issue that has only grown in relevance since the first edition’s publication in 2008: the religious-secular conflict in Israel. The first edition focused on the role that courts and justices play in deeply charged political battles. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, social groups turned to the judicial arm of the state in an effort to force the state to change its laws and policies on religious personal status law, or family law. Through an extensive case study of the interactions of the women’s movement with the High Court of Justice, Woods argues that the most important determining factor explaining when, why, and how national courts enter into the world of divisive politics is found in the intellectual or judicial communities with whom justices live, work, and think about the law. The interaction among members of this community over time culminates in new legal norms. This second edition takes into account what has happened in the past decade, with public debate over religion and the state moving away from the court and into the realm of popular politics—on the Knesset floor, in the media, in shopping malls, and on the streets. Included for the first time is the dataset for the author’s national survey of women’s movement volunteers.
Patricia J. Woods is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida.
Patricia J. Woods examines a controversial issue in the politics of many countries around the world: the increasing role that courts and justices have played in deeply charged political battles. Through an extensive case study of the religious-secular conflict in Israel, she argues that the most important determining factor explaining when, why, and how national courts enter into the world of divisive politics is found in the intellectual or judicial communities with whom justices live, work, and think about the law on a daily basis. The interaction among members of this community, Woods maintains, is an organic, sociological process of intellectual exchange that over time culminates in new legal norms that may, through court cases, become binding legal principles. Given the right conditions—electoral democracy, basic judicial independence, and some institutional constraints—courts may use these new legal norms as the basis for a jurisprudence that justifies hearing controversial cases and allows for creative answers to major issues of national political contention.
“Her study of Israeli judicial politics is shrewd, sophisticated, culturally sensitive, and historically grounded … Judicial Power and National Politics is a welcome addition to the scholarship on comparative judicial politics, and Patricia Woods is a welcome new voice in the field … The impact of her work will cut across subfields and enrich the political science discipline.” — The Law and Politics Book Review
“This well-written book makes an important contribution by pushing the analysis of the controversies surrounding judicial intervention/activism to take ideas seriously. It provides a very persuasive account of Israel’s High Court of Justice’s involvement in religious issues and the key role of the judicial community in precipitating that involvement. At the same time, Woods attends to the roles of institutional factors and social movements in facilitating the controversial rights actions/decisions of the HCJ. This book is a must read for scholars of law and politics.” — Austin Sarat, Amherst College
“The author’s notion of an extended judicial community of judges, academic lawyers, and cause lawyers is a major move forward in the ‘new institutionalism’ in the study of law and courts.” — Martin Shapiro, Boalt Law School, University of California at Berkeley
Patricia J. Woods is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida.
Mini-Symposia, Articles, Chapters, and Reviews by Patricia Sohn
What do Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, Edward Said, Timothy Mitchell, and the 1979 American musical film, “Hair,” share in common? They all provide us with lessons – in the case of the scholars, a few conditioned by circumstances in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – that may be useful in considering the issues of identity politics that confront us today in the public sphere with movements such as Black Lives Matter taking center stage in our political discourses, if not in our developing thoughts and ideas.
https://www.e-ir.info/2021/09/28/theatres-of-difference-the-film-hair-otherness-alterity-subjectivity-and-lessons-for-identity-politics/
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139565974
https://nyupress.org/9781479828944/
In addition, in many cases, including both democratic and semiauthoritarian cases, ideas were critical factors driving judicial empowerment (Turkey, Israel, Canada, and the United Kingdom). In other cases, ideas were part of a wider set of forces driving judicial empowerment, such as the case of Spain, in which a process including opposition political parties was key. And in still other cases, ideas played a less significant role (Mexico, Chile). Strategy, in many of these cases, served ideational commitments rather than the reverse. In addition to the institutional and ideational points just mentioned, our studies suggest that judicial empowerment may be advanced by strong actors rather than weakening actors. Moreover, while rational-strategic approaches have tended to emphasize politicians’ or judges’ abilities to read the implications of current events for predicted changes in the future, our contributions highlight the importance of past experiences to the perceived interests of those who promote judicial empowerment. That is, many of our articles suggest that those who supply judicial empowerment may do so reactively, as a response to a past experiences that they want to prevent from reoccurring. And finally, our studies strongly suggest that judicial empowerment is a process that often occurs over time rather than through discrete, momentary changes. The causes of the social mobilization leading to judicial empowerment, reasons for changing positions among politicians, changing positions among judicial actors, and so on must be analyzed over time. In some cases, these analyses must address significant periods—even decades—to identify most accurately the timing, actors, institutions, and ideas at play in judicial empowerment.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1065912909350565
https://www.cairn.info/revue-droit-et-societe1-2003-3.htm
The articles in this minisymposium engage historicalcontextual and rational-strategic analyses to explore the sources of judicial empowerment across seven cases located in four major regions. These cases suggest that regime type is not a significant predictor of judicial empowerment. And all of these cases demonstrate that strategy plays an important role in judicial empowerment. The strategies invoked are often not based on simple interests in political power or on electoral politics and, in some cases, are not related to majoritarian institutions at all. Strategies, thus, may vary significantly by case. In addition, in many cases, including both democratic and semiauthoritarian cases, ideas were critical factors driving judicial empowerment (Turkey, Israel, Canada, and the United Kingdom). In other cases, ideas were part of a wider set of forces driving judicial empowerment, such as the case of Spain, in which a process including opposition political parties was key. And in still other cases, ideas played a less significant role (Mexico, Chile). Strategy, in many of these cases, served ideational commitments rather than the reverse.
In addition to the institutional and ideational points just mentioned, our studies suggest that judicial empowerment may be advanced by strong actors rather than weakening actors. Moreover, while rational-strategic approaches have tended to emphasize politicians’ or judges’ abilities to read the implications of current events for predicted changes in the future, our contributions highlight the importance of past experiences to the perceived interests of those who promote judicial empowerment. That is, many of our articles suggest that those who supply judicial empowerment may do so reactively, as a response to a past experiences that they want to prevent from reoccurring. And finally, our studies strongly suggest that judicial empowerment is a process that often occurs over time rather than through discrete, momentary changes. The causes of the social mobilization leading to judicial empowerment, reasons for changing positions among politicians, changing positions among judicial actors, and so on must be analyzed over time. In some cases, these analyses must address significant periods—even decades—to identify most accurately the timing, actors, institutions, and ideas at play in judicial empowerment.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1065912909350565
Dans quelle mesure les tribunaux peuvent-ils impulser des évolutionspolitiques importantes par l’intermédiaire de leurs décisions? En1988, la Haute Cour de Justice israélienne a rendu deux décisionsmarquantes en faveur des droits des femmes et à l’encontre des auto-rités religieuses, conduisant à des évolutions majeures tant au plan po-litique que social. La Cour était en mesure d’engager ce conflit durabledu fait d’un climat plus général régnant dans la « communauté juridi-que ». Les
cause lawyers des mouvements sociaux proches de la gau-che faisaient partie de cette communauté qui était, avant tout, le creu-set d’où émergeait la réflexion sur les nouvelles normes. La HauteCour s’est finalement saisie de certaines requêtes pour contesterl’autonomie institutionnelle dont bénéficient les autorités religieusesen Israël.
Cause lawyering – Droit des femmes – Israël – Juristes – Religion.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-droit-et-societe1-2003-3-page-605.htm
Citation
Woods, P.J. and Barclay, S.W. (2008), "Cause lawyers as legal innovators with and against the state: Symbiosis or opposition?", Sarat, A. (Ed.) Studies in Law, Politics and Society (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 45), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 203-231.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(08)45006-8
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41804936 by Patricia Woods (e.g., Sohn)
https://search.lib.umich.edu/articles/record/cdi_proquest_journals_251733670
After thirty-nine years of uneasy coexistence between Israel's civil legal system and state religious authorities, in the late 1980s the High Court of Justice (HCJ) began to challenge state rabbinical authorities in a conflict so heated that, by the mid-1990s, the President of the High Court began to receive death threats as editorials and letters in Orthodox newspapers called him a traitor to his people. Why was the HCJ able and willing to enter into this protracted, divisive conflict when it had been dramatically unsuccessful the one time it had tried to do so previously? I argue that the emergence of new, polarized social movements in the 1970s, a weakening of the Knesset after the 1977 elections, and changes in the rules of standing in the HCJ in the 1980s provided the HCJ with the opportunity to enter this conflict in a new position of strength. Social movements like the women's movement, which challenged the religious status quo, entered into an implicit alliance with the HCJ, transforming both and changing the balance of power between the HCJ and other state institutions. The HCJ made use of the opportunity afforded to it by this legal mobilization, taking up the argument brought to it by the women's movement: the women's equality argument. It combined women's equality with a positive law method it had developed in earlier years, using general equality together with administrative legality to advocate rights. In this case, it advocated women's rights in favor of citizens and against religious authorities. I argue that the HCJ's use of administrative legality, while citing British common law as its source, has more in common with the development of administrative legality (to make constitutional-type decisions) in civil law countries of continental Europe. I use multiple types of evidence—particularly informal processes—available through court battles and the extra judicial debates around those battles to triangulate my argument that the HCJ and social movements entered into an implicit alliance, interacting through the judicial community and the courtroom in Israel. These informal processes have important implications for scholars seeking to study state-society relations in other state institutions.
The authors and contributors demonstrate that religion is a significant force that drives societies and polities around the world, and that a radical change in the Western understanding of value-driven global politics is needed. It offers new local voices that many Western audiences have not yet heard. The essays in this volume suggest the need for an appreciation of Divinity as a quintessence holding a significant place in the hearts, minds, social orders, and political organization of polities around the world.
Simone Raudino is Visiting Professor at the Kyiv School of Economics.
Patricia Sohn is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida.
https://www.press.umich.edu/11866503
In Judicial Power and National Politics, Second Edition, Patricia J. Woods returns to an issue that has only grown in relevance since the first edition’s publication in 2008: the religious-secular conflict in Israel. The first edition focused on the role that courts and justices play in deeply charged political battles. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, social groups turned to the judicial arm of the state in an effort to force the state to change its laws and policies on religious personal status law, or family law. Through an extensive case study of the interactions of the women’s movement with the High Court of Justice, Woods argues that the most important determining factor explaining when, why, and how national courts enter into the world of divisive politics is found in the intellectual or judicial communities with whom justices live, work, and think about the law. The interaction among members of this community over time culminates in new legal norms. This second edition takes into account what has happened in the past decade, with public debate over religion and the state moving away from the court and into the realm of popular politics—on the Knesset floor, in the media, in shopping malls, and on the streets. Included for the first time is the dataset for the author’s national survey of women’s movement volunteers.
Patricia J. Woods is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida.
Patricia J. Woods examines a controversial issue in the politics of many countries around the world: the increasing role that courts and justices have played in deeply charged political battles. Through an extensive case study of the religious-secular conflict in Israel, she argues that the most important determining factor explaining when, why, and how national courts enter into the world of divisive politics is found in the intellectual or judicial communities with whom justices live, work, and think about the law on a daily basis. The interaction among members of this community, Woods maintains, is an organic, sociological process of intellectual exchange that over time culminates in new legal norms that may, through court cases, become binding legal principles. Given the right conditions—electoral democracy, basic judicial independence, and some institutional constraints—courts may use these new legal norms as the basis for a jurisprudence that justifies hearing controversial cases and allows for creative answers to major issues of national political contention.
“Her study of Israeli judicial politics is shrewd, sophisticated, culturally sensitive, and historically grounded … Judicial Power and National Politics is a welcome addition to the scholarship on comparative judicial politics, and Patricia Woods is a welcome new voice in the field … The impact of her work will cut across subfields and enrich the political science discipline.” — The Law and Politics Book Review
“This well-written book makes an important contribution by pushing the analysis of the controversies surrounding judicial intervention/activism to take ideas seriously. It provides a very persuasive account of Israel’s High Court of Justice’s involvement in religious issues and the key role of the judicial community in precipitating that involvement. At the same time, Woods attends to the roles of institutional factors and social movements in facilitating the controversial rights actions/decisions of the HCJ. This book is a must read for scholars of law and politics.” — Austin Sarat, Amherst College
“The author’s notion of an extended judicial community of judges, academic lawyers, and cause lawyers is a major move forward in the ‘new institutionalism’ in the study of law and courts.” — Martin Shapiro, Boalt Law School, University of California at Berkeley
Patricia J. Woods is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida.
What do Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, Edward Said, Timothy Mitchell, and the 1979 American musical film, “Hair,” share in common? They all provide us with lessons – in the case of the scholars, a few conditioned by circumstances in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – that may be useful in considering the issues of identity politics that confront us today in the public sphere with movements such as Black Lives Matter taking center stage in our political discourses, if not in our developing thoughts and ideas.
https://www.e-ir.info/2021/09/28/theatres-of-difference-the-film-hair-otherness-alterity-subjectivity-and-lessons-for-identity-politics/
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139565974
https://nyupress.org/9781479828944/
In addition, in many cases, including both democratic and semiauthoritarian cases, ideas were critical factors driving judicial empowerment (Turkey, Israel, Canada, and the United Kingdom). In other cases, ideas were part of a wider set of forces driving judicial empowerment, such as the case of Spain, in which a process including opposition political parties was key. And in still other cases, ideas played a less significant role (Mexico, Chile). Strategy, in many of these cases, served ideational commitments rather than the reverse. In addition to the institutional and ideational points just mentioned, our studies suggest that judicial empowerment may be advanced by strong actors rather than weakening actors. Moreover, while rational-strategic approaches have tended to emphasize politicians’ or judges’ abilities to read the implications of current events for predicted changes in the future, our contributions highlight the importance of past experiences to the perceived interests of those who promote judicial empowerment. That is, many of our articles suggest that those who supply judicial empowerment may do so reactively, as a response to a past experiences that they want to prevent from reoccurring. And finally, our studies strongly suggest that judicial empowerment is a process that often occurs over time rather than through discrete, momentary changes. The causes of the social mobilization leading to judicial empowerment, reasons for changing positions among politicians, changing positions among judicial actors, and so on must be analyzed over time. In some cases, these analyses must address significant periods—even decades—to identify most accurately the timing, actors, institutions, and ideas at play in judicial empowerment.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1065912909350565
https://www.cairn.info/revue-droit-et-societe1-2003-3.htm
The articles in this minisymposium engage historicalcontextual and rational-strategic analyses to explore the sources of judicial empowerment across seven cases located in four major regions. These cases suggest that regime type is not a significant predictor of judicial empowerment. And all of these cases demonstrate that strategy plays an important role in judicial empowerment. The strategies invoked are often not based on simple interests in political power or on electoral politics and, in some cases, are not related to majoritarian institutions at all. Strategies, thus, may vary significantly by case. In addition, in many cases, including both democratic and semiauthoritarian cases, ideas were critical factors driving judicial empowerment (Turkey, Israel, Canada, and the United Kingdom). In other cases, ideas were part of a wider set of forces driving judicial empowerment, such as the case of Spain, in which a process including opposition political parties was key. And in still other cases, ideas played a less significant role (Mexico, Chile). Strategy, in many of these cases, served ideational commitments rather than the reverse.
In addition to the institutional and ideational points just mentioned, our studies suggest that judicial empowerment may be advanced by strong actors rather than weakening actors. Moreover, while rational-strategic approaches have tended to emphasize politicians’ or judges’ abilities to read the implications of current events for predicted changes in the future, our contributions highlight the importance of past experiences to the perceived interests of those who promote judicial empowerment. That is, many of our articles suggest that those who supply judicial empowerment may do so reactively, as a response to a past experiences that they want to prevent from reoccurring. And finally, our studies strongly suggest that judicial empowerment is a process that often occurs over time rather than through discrete, momentary changes. The causes of the social mobilization leading to judicial empowerment, reasons for changing positions among politicians, changing positions among judicial actors, and so on must be analyzed over time. In some cases, these analyses must address significant periods—even decades—to identify most accurately the timing, actors, institutions, and ideas at play in judicial empowerment.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1065912909350565
Dans quelle mesure les tribunaux peuvent-ils impulser des évolutionspolitiques importantes par l’intermédiaire de leurs décisions? En1988, la Haute Cour de Justice israélienne a rendu deux décisionsmarquantes en faveur des droits des femmes et à l’encontre des auto-rités religieuses, conduisant à des évolutions majeures tant au plan po-litique que social. La Cour était en mesure d’engager ce conflit durabledu fait d’un climat plus général régnant dans la « communauté juridi-que ». Les
cause lawyers des mouvements sociaux proches de la gau-che faisaient partie de cette communauté qui était, avant tout, le creu-set d’où émergeait la réflexion sur les nouvelles normes. La HauteCour s’est finalement saisie de certaines requêtes pour contesterl’autonomie institutionnelle dont bénéficient les autorités religieusesen Israël.
Cause lawyering – Droit des femmes – Israël – Juristes – Religion.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-droit-et-societe1-2003-3-page-605.htm
Citation
Woods, P.J. and Barclay, S.W. (2008), "Cause lawyers as legal innovators with and against the state: Symbiosis or opposition?", Sarat, A. (Ed.) Studies in Law, Politics and Society (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 45), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 203-231.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(08)45006-8
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41804936 by Patricia Woods (e.g., Sohn)
https://www.e-ir.info/2016/12/03/interview-prince-el-waleed-m-madibo/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jims.1.1.08
For source links in blog pieces, go to blog link:
https://thearenapeopleandpolitics.com/what-do-palestinians-really-want/
For source links in blog pieces, go to blog link:
https://thearenapeopleandpolitics.com/palestinians-and-the-peace-process-some-modest-suggestions/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2018/11/16/what-is-nationalism-a-nation-a-nationalist/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2019/02/09/jaccuse-the-case-for-traditional-capitalism/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2019/01/25/jaccuse-the-case-for-pre-modernism-or-the-rural-urban-divide/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2018/12/15/habitus-why-positive-law-is-better-than-originalism-or-post-modernism-in-law/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2018/09/29/fiction-film-empiricism-comparative-politics-as-action-and-adventure/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2018/05/18/why-trumps-meeting-with-north-korea-matters-the-asia-middle-east-connection/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2018/01/26/whither-iran-a-21-year-old-reform-movement-on-the-brink-of-success/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2017/12/08/why-jerusalem-is-the-capital-of-israel-and-palestine/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2017/06/08/will-trump-be-to-palestinian-israeli-peace-what-nixon-was-to-the-u-s-and-china/
For source links in blog pieces, go to blog link:
https://www.e-ir.info/2017/06/23/what-do-we-mean-by-local-people-the-palestinian-case/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2017/04/13/field-research-research-design-and-scientific-method-a-personal-account/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2017/03/16/symbolic-violence-and-post-election-usa-a-parable/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2016/12/09/inhabiting-orthodoxy-discussing-islam-and-feminism-continued/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2016/11/24/methods-war-how-ideas-matter-within-political-science/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2016/11/09/explaining-the-donald-trump-victory/
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https://www.e-ir.info/2016/10/20/times-of-tumult-discussing-islam-and-feminism/