Lexington Books Reproductive Rights in New York and New Jersey: Abortion, the Empire, and the Garden

New York and New Jersey maintain almost identical laws dealing with abortion, but the process for developing those laws differed in each state. Courts were heavily involved in New Jersey, whereas most policy decisions came from elected officials in New York. In this book, Parent argues that these differences in the location of policy development in the two states are attributable to early changes that took place either in the courts or the state houses. These early changes set the narrative frame for how abortion was conceptualized in New York and New Jersey respectively, helping to lock in a legal or political outlook that kept development of abortion law and policy within its originating institution. Using the words of judges and justices from state and federal courts as well as lawmakers in the two states over a forty-year period, Parent demonstrates that how policy makers thought and wrote about abortion had a critically important impact on the extent to which courts or elected officials would ultimately create the laws that limited or expanded access to reproductive rights. Review This is a path-breaking book. It is the best book I have read on the relationship between timing, framing, and court and political institution impact on public policy. The author finds that if courts, as in New Jersey, or political institutions, as in New York, first frame abortion policy, the institution that first framed the issue influences in significance ways future abortion policy. In each state, courts and political institutions deferred to the originating abortion policy-maker, rather than play a significant role of subsequent abortion policy. Because New Jersey courts first framed abortion issues, elected officials deferred to the courts. This resulted in a legal/rights framing of abortion policy. Because the legislature and governor in New York first framed abortion policy, state courts deferred to elected officials on abortion policy, and allowed a political rather than a legal framing of abortion policy and issues. This book includes superbly written and researched extensive case studies on abortion policy in New York and New Jersey. For comparison, there are less extensive case studies of abortion policy and politics in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Also, for comparison, there is a case study on timing, framing, and the role of courts and political institutions in the making of capital punishment policies in New York and New Jersey. The significance of the findings in each case study come alive, as they are compared with the other case studies, and, most importantly, analyzed, the findings are explored in the light of a very sophisticated model of policy change. The research design is simply superb, as is the author's knowledge of a wide range of scholarly literatures on law and courts, abortion policy, state politics and policy-making, and the relationships between federal and state courts. This book is a must read for scholars of law and courts of quite different persuasions, American political development, abortion policy, New York and New Jersey politics and courts; and path dependence in courts and political institutions. The book is so well written, that it can be used in a wide range of classes for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Finally, because of the research design, range of methods, and wide venues for comparison, this book will also be a must read for students in courses (or sections of courses) that explore methods and research design for the study of courts.--Ronald Kahn, Oberlin College Jonathan Parent asks why New Jersey and New York's quite similar policies related to abortion resulted from quite different policy-making processes, with the courts playing a much larger role in New Jersey, legislatures the dominant role in New York. His carefully qualified answer: The decisions that placed the issue on the agenda in New Jersey came from the courts, those in New York from the legis