By focusing on the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) and the Federal Circuit, Unah raises a series of interesting research questions. First, how does decision making differ between generalist and specialized courts? Do models of judicial behavior developed in the context of generalist courts apply to judges on specialist courts? How does the institutional structure of administrative agencies affect judicial review of agency decisions? And do these specialized courts exhibit any particular policy orientation, even after controlling for the partisan affiliation of judicial personnel? Fortunately, the CIT's docket is composed of cases that allow Unah to construct a straightforward research design to analyze several of these questions.

The CIT hears cases appealed from the International Trade Commission (ITC), an independent regulatory commission, and from the Department of Commerce (DOC), an executive agency, both of which render related judgments in anti-dumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) cases. In these cases, the ITC judges the adverse impact of unfair trade practices on domestic industry, while the DOC determines whether a claim of dumping or foreign government subsidization can be supported by hard evidence. Both tasks are critical for the imposition of protective tariffs but are rendered by separate bureaucracies with different institutional structures. Aggrieved claimants can appeal an unfavorable determination by either agency to the CIT, where individual judges render decisions in AD/CVD cases under a deferential standard of review. A loss in the CIT may be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Unah begins his analysis by setting forth a series of theoretical propositions regarding the behavior of specialized courts. Although his theoretical discussion tends to drift into normative territory, Unah first suggests that judges with specialized knowledge and expertise will less often defer to administrative agency decisions. To test this proposition, Unah compares reversal rates at the CIT of appeals from administrative agencies with reversal rates of agency appeals in the federal district courts and U.S. Supreme Court. Perhaps not surprisingly, Unah finds that the CIT is significantly more likely to reverse the agency's decision. While this finding may be suggestive, it cannot be viewed as conclusive, since the types of agency decisions appealed to the district courts differ substantially from those appealed to the CIT. In a later chapter, Unah compares reversal rates of agency appeals in the Federal Circuit and the D.C. Circuit, finding (contrary to expectations) that the Federal Circuit demonstrates a higher level of deference in agency appeals than the generalist D.C. Circuit. Of course, many cases in the D.C. Circuit are appealed directly from federal agencies, while the Federal Circuit hears cases appealed from a lower court. The Federal Circuit's deferential stance toward trade agencies could thus be attributable to the agencies' choices not to appeal losses in the court below.

Drawing on research presenting integrated models of judicial behavior based on legal and extralegal factors, Unah turns to theories of judicial decision making. In specifying a series of decision models at the CIT and the Federal Circuit, Unah includes variables that reflect judges' party affiliations, certain case facts related to the applicable statutory standards, economic indicators reflecting trade deficits and other factors, and industry-specific measures related to party resources. To evaluate his hypothesis that decisions rendered by an independent regulatory commission will receive greater deference than those rendered by an executive agency, Unah also includes a variable measuring whether the case was appealed from the ITC or the DOC. Based on his models of CIT decision making, Unah concludes that the court generally adopts a protectionist orientation, that it is more likely to reverse the DOC than the ITC, that statutory standards are significant determinants of CIT decisions, that industry political power has some, but not an overwhelming, effect, and that the political affiliation of CIT judges has little impact on case outcomes. At the Federal Circuit, Unah tests similar models and finds that the Federal Circuit is more likely to protect U.S. industry when the plaintiff is an economically powerful industry, when the U.S. holds a high trade deficit with the trading nation, and when the panel is dominated by a Republican majority. And, as in the CIT, the Federal Circuit is more likely to affirm the ITC's decisions than those of the DOC.

From these findings, Unah draws several broad conclusions. First, he argues that bureaucratic structures condition judicial review. Based on the finding that decisions from the ITC (an independent regulatory commission) are more frequently supported than those of the DOC (an executive agency), Unah suggests that the bipartisan, quasi-judicial ITC renders more defensible judgments than the more political DOC. Of course, this interpretation is somewhat speculative, since Unah's data do not allow a clear conclusion concerning the causal connection between institutional structure and judicial review. It is possible, for example, that the ITC is affirmed more frequently because its judgments concerning economic consequences for domestic industry are more clearly susceptible to proof with reliable data. Second, Unah concludes that integrated models of judicial decision making best account for judicial behavior in the CIT and Federal Circuit, as both specialized courts are sensitive to statutory factors, as well as extralegal pressures such as party capability.

Finally, Unah suggests that CIT judges' expertise translates into less deference to the judgments of administrative agencies, and that these specialized judges “embrace uncertainty far more courageously than do generalist [judges] in their dealings with the bureaucracy” (pp. 175–6). While it may be true that expertise leads to more intensive judicial review, some might quibble with Unah's characterization of such review as “courageous.” As Dean Leebron of the Columbia Law School noted in 1999 at the Eleventh Judicial Conference of the Court of International Trade, “some have said that expertise—there may be too much of a good thing—may lead to a distortion in a standard of review, as members highly experienced with the subject matter might be more inclined to second-guess administrative agency determinations” (195 F.R.O. 89). From this perspective, Unah's findings could support the more negative interpretation that expertise engenders overly intrusive judicial review.

Unah's book thus raises interesting empirical and normative questions about the nature of judicial review by a specialized judiciary and will surely generate further research on the relationship between specialized courts and the bureaucracy. Because the book represents an extended foray into rarely explored territory and substantially expands our knowledge of the specialized judiciary, Unah has made a significant contribution to the literature.