Courts depend on litigants to learn whether their rulings are obeyed

Evidence

When the target population for a decision is large—for example, police officers who interrogate suspects—judges cannot monitor compliance with their rulings directly. Even when the target population is small, courts often do not know if their decisions are being carried out unless affected groups bring instances of noncompliance to their attention in a new lawsuit. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2875

Categorization

• XREF: Classic judicial-implementation literature (Horowitz, Rosenberg’s Hollow Hope) on why court orders lack self-enforcing machinery; bears on the course’s question of judicial capacity versus legislatures.
• DEFINE: Clarifies what ‘implementation’ means for courts: compliance monitoring is outsourced to affected groups through new litigation rather than done directly.