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This book provides a rare view of a creative scholar at work during a highly productive phase of his career. It shows him as an innovator, theorist, methodologist, "missionary," critic, and scientist, but he remains, withal, in his fashion, a humanist. He believes that institutions and processes—particularly law, politics, and scholarship—are best understood in human terms. With Holmes, he believes that law is a prediction of what courts will do; hence, to understand law it is necessary to understand judicial behavior. A full explanation of a judge's behavior would take into account his health (both physical and mental), his personality, his culture and society, and his ideology. Glendon Schubert concedes this but focuses primarily on ideology because he believes the other variables are sublimated in it. Therefore, to him, ideology—attitudes toward human values—is the basic explanation of judicial behavior, and jurisprudence is necessarily human. The studies in this volume are important in the study of judicial behavior, for they broke new ground, and some were forerunners of major books, such as The Judicial Mind , which was published in 1965. Each shows Professor Schubert's concern at the time they were written, and taken together they show the movement and growth of his ideas and interests.

The politics of public policy is a vibrant research area increasingly at the forefront of intellectual innovations in the discipline. We argue that political scientists are best positioned to undertake research on the politics of public policy when they possess expertise in particular policy areas. Policy expertise positions scholars to conduct theoretically innovative work and to ensure that empirical research reflects the reality they aim to analyze. It also confers important practical advantages, such as access to a significant number of academic positions and major sources of research funding not otherwise available to political scientists. Perhaps most importantly, scholars with policy expertise are equipped to defend the value of political science degrees and research in the public sphere.

We argue that political science blogs can link conversations among political scientists with broader public debates about contemporary issues. Political science blogs do this by identifying relevant research, explaining its findings, and articulating its applicability. We identify strategies besides blogging that individual scholars and the discipline could undertake to enhance its public profile. Adapted from the source document.