The judge: a new actor in the political landscape

Contemporary societies increasingly turn to courts to seek answers to individual and collective claims. The political significance that justice has thus acquired is the subject on which we will focus. We start by discussing the method and approach we have chosen to follow. We describe several national cases in the book, based on the work of those social scientists who have focused on the so-called judicialization of politics: that is, the expansion of judicial power. After considering the salient features of this phenomenon, the chapter provides an overview of both the values and institutional settings that have supported this evolution in mature democracies.