In Courts: Unmasked, Alyx Mark has taught scholars of courts—and scholars of American politics more generally—about the politics of state court administration in the U.S. context. Her arguments and findings will convince political scientists of the importance of the policy of court administration for our understanding of judicial politics in general—and particularly, the importance of this topic for ordinary people's lives. Though Mark focuses on civil cases, her arguments make clear that judicial scholars should focus their attention on state court administration policymaking for the criminal context as well.

Three aspects of this book stand out. First, its mixed methods approach to understanding the policy making process is first rate; she combines carefully selected interviews with quantitative scales measuring centralization of administrative court procedures. Secondly, this book makes a significant contribution to the theory of court administrative policymaking. But the other notable aspect of this book is that her findings have extraordinary normative implications, the importance of which should inspire much more research on the value of these procedural policies. In this review, I will summarize her findings, but I will also explore the implication of her findings for future research.

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