The Institutional Judge

What do judges do when they are not hearing cases or writing decisions? Far more than conventional accounts suggest. Behind the scenes, judges work through committees, pilot programs, and judicial training networks to revise rules of procedure, design case-management and alternative dispute resolution systems, establish specialized courts, develop judicial education programs, and advise on courthouse construction. In doing so, judges quietly remake how disputes enter courts, which claims are processed, and what forms of justice become possible.

Toby S. Goldbach calls the figure behind this work the institutional judge: part adjudicator, part reformer, part educator. The institutional judge helps govern court infrastructure and judicial administration, drawing on judicial authority over process and procedure. By making this consequential labor visible, Goldbach opens it to scrutiny.

Drawing on over fifty interviews with judges, lawyers, and court staff, together with participant observation, archival research, and fieldwork in Canada, the United States, Ghana, Israel, and the Philippines, Goldbach follows the institutional judge in action. The book moves from US federal rulemaking governing settlements in mass-tort class actions to Canadian courthouse design and Indigenous restorative justice to transnational judicial education and the spread of court-connected ADR.

Written in an accessible, narrative socio-legal style, The Institutional Judge expands the study of judicial behavior and politics and rethinks judicial independence and legal instrumentalism—the use of law as a tool for social change. Across courthouse corridors and international conferences, Goldbach shows that court reform emerges not through rational, technocratic design but through bounded knowledge, contest and competition, carefully managed relationships, and what she calls “professional amateurism”: creative problem-solving beyond judges’ formal expertise. As courts face overloaded dockets, threats to judicial independence, and rapid technological change, the book offers a framework for asking who designs justice—and with what consequences.

Fieldwork for the book took me to courts and legal institutions in Canada, the United States, Ghana, Israel, and the Philippines. As Co-Chair of the Law and Society Association's Collaborative Research Network on Innovations in Judging, I help sustain an international network of more than 100 scholars, judges and practitioners from jurisdictions including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Israel, Pakistan, Singapore, the United States and the United Kingdom.