R. Shep Melnick, professor and chairman of the Politics Department at Brandeis University, is the author of
Regulation and the Courts: The Case of the Clean Air Act (1983).
Review
"This work is of the very highest quality. It is the best work so far in integrating the study of courts
into the general study of the politics of the policymaking process."
--Martin Shapiro, Coffroth Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley.
"An excellent book, very well written, on an increasingly important but mostly ignored topic."
--American Political Science Review
Brookings Institution Press Web Site, October, 2000
Summary
This book examines how statutory interpretation has affected the development of three programs : Aid to Families
with Dependent Children, education for the handicapped, and food stamps. It explores how these decisions have changed
state and national policies and how other institutions--especially Congress--have reacted to them. Although these
three programs differ in several important ways, in each instance court action has expanded program benefits and
increased federal control over state and local governments.
