There are more than 600 Federal district judges serving today, and they decide some 230,000 civil cases each year. About 90% of the decisions they reach are final. Lyles argues that these lower court judges not only influence the flow of information to the judicial hierarchy, but they formulate questions that influence how higher courts, including the Supreme Court, respond. As such they are key elements in the formulation and implementation of public policy. To cite a few examples, they desegregate school districts, run mental institutions and prisons, break up monopolies, and reapportion legislatures. Lyles begins by examining the structure and function of federal courts and detailing the history, operation, and purpose of the district courts. He then turns to the selection, nomination, and appointment of district judges. Lyles then analyzes the extent to which presidents might advance policy objectives through their judicial appointments to the district courts. After examining how African-American, Latino, and white judges, male and female, view their roles as policy actors, Lyles concludes with a discussion of the implications of the study. Important for students and scholars of contemporary public policy and the court system.

Winner, Next Generation Indie Book Awards - Women's Nonfiction Best Book of 2020, National Law Journal The inspiring and previously untold history of the women considered—but not selected—for the US Supreme Court In 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor became the first female justice on the United States Supreme Court after centuries of male appointments, a watershed moment in the long struggle for gender equality. Yet few know about the remarkable women considered in the decades before her triumph. Shortlisted tells the overlooked stories of nine extraordinary women—a cohort large enough to seat the entire Supreme Court—who appeared on presidential lists dating back to the 1930s. Florence Allen, the first female judge on the highest court in Ohio, was named repeatedly in those early years. Eight more followed, including Amalya Kearse, a federal appellate judge who was the first African American woman viewed as a potential Supreme Court nominee. Award-winning scholars Renee Knake Jefferson and Hannah Brenner Johnson cleverly weave together long-forgotten materials from presidential libraries and private archives to reveal the professional and personal lives of these accomplished women. In addition to filling a notable historical gap, the book exposes the tragedy of the shortlist. Listing and bypassing qualified female candidates creates a false appearance of diversity that preserves the status quo, a fate all too familiar for women, especially minorities. Shortlisted offers a roadmap to combat enduring bias and discrimination. It is a must-read for those seeking positions of power as well as for the powerful who select them in the legal profession and beyond.

The U.S. Department of Justice is an institution of vast reach and power over the American people, with little oversight into its internal operations. This book examines the ways that attorneys general, FBI directors, federal prosecutors and other Justice Department officials have often abused their powers to achieve political goals rather than pursuing justice. Its warning remains as relevant in the digital post-9/11 era of the expanded national security state as it was in the days of J. Edgar Hoover.