MARTIN SHAPIRO AND THE MOVEMENT FROM “OLD” TO “NEW” INSTITUTIONALIST STUDIES IN PUBLIC LAW SCHOLARSHIP

This article uses Martin Shapiro's body of work as a point of departure for tracing the development over the past few decades of “institutionalist” approaches to the study of law and courts. It begins by reviewing some of the distinctive characteristics of Shapiro's brand of institutional analysis, including the pluralist and process models that informed his vision of politics and his preference for using historical-interpretive case study methods rather than more quantitative or formal approaches. This lays the groundwork for the claim that he was a progenitor of what emerged in the late 1980s as the so-called “new institutionalism” in public law scholarship. After then reviewing some of Shapiro's provocative (and not entirely positive) reactions to the emergent literature, the article explores the useful ways in which more recent institutionalist scholarship has moved beyond Shapiro's agenda.