Searching for Justice Court-Inspired Housing Policy as a Mechanism for Social and Economic Mobility

Abstract

Recent scholarship questions the role of the judiciary in promoting social change. The author looks at the question by examining the long effort of the New Jersey Supreme Court to assure social and economic choice for urban residents through inclusionary zoning. The conclusion is that although the judiciary is constrained, the constraints are not necessarily structural. Rather, the court plays a crucial role in agenda setting and prompting other governing institutions to act. As such, the question is not whether the courts can cause social change but what the proper role of the judiciary is in the broad interplay of governing institutions.