Download or read book Heterogeneity in Supreme Court Decision Making written by Brandon L. Bartels and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: The study of Supreme Court decision making has been heavily influenced by the attitudinal model, which contends that justices' decisions are dominated by their personal policy preferences. While scholars differ in their acceptance of the attitudinal model, most assume that policy preferences exhibit a uniform impact across all situations in which justices make decisions. This assumption has allowed scholars to make broad generalizations about justices' behavior, but my dissertation argues that there exists systematic variation, or heterogeneity, in the impact of policy preferences that can be explained theoretically and tested empirically. The goal of the dissertation is to relax this uniformity assumption in order to identify and explain the extent to which the impact of justices' policy preferences on their choices varies across different situations. Using a psychologically-oriented framework, I develop a theory specifying the mechanisms--attitude strength and accountability--that explain variation in the preference-behavior relationship. I posit that situational factors associated with each mechanism influence the magnitude of preference-based behavior. Employing a multilevel modeling framework, I execute three sets of empirical analyses. In Chapter 3, I test whether hypothesized case-level factors within the Court's immediate environment have shaped preference-based behavior for portions of the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts. The results provide uniform support for some of the hypotheses across all three Court eras, uniform rejection for others, and mixed support for others. In Chapter 4, I examine the degree to which external strategic considerations--public opinion and the preferences of the other branches of government--shape preference-based behavior. The results reveal that public mood exhibits an effect contrary to expectations and ideological consensus within Congress and between Congress and the President is capable, under certain conditions, of constraining the magnitude of preference-based behavior. In Chapter 5, I test the impact of precedent-related legal considerations on the preference-behavior relationship. The results reveal that legal considerations are capable of shaping the magnitude of preference-based behavior on the Court. The theory and findings contribute to the literature by underscoring the idea that the preference-behavior relationship on the Court is shaped by the varying situations that confront the justices.
Download or read book Supreme Court Decision Making written by Cornell W. Clayton and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What influences decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court? For decades social scientists focused on the ideology of individual justices. Supreme Court Decision Making moves beyond this focus by exploring how justices are influenced by the distinctive features of courts as institutions and their place in the political system. Drawing on interpretive-historical institutionalism as well as rational choice theory, a group of leading scholars consider such factors as the influence of jurisprudence, the unique characteristics of supreme courts, the dynamics of coalition building, and the effects of social movements. The volume's distinguished contributors and broad range make it essential reading for those interested either in the Supreme Court or the nature of institutional politics. Original essays contributed by Lawrence Baum, Paul Brace, Elizabeth Bussiere, Cornell Clayton, Sue Davis, Charles Epp, Lee Epstein, Howard Gillman, Melinda Gann Hall, Ronald Kahn, Jack Knight, Forrest Maltzman, David O'Brien, Jeffrey Segal, Charles Sheldon, James Spriggs II, and Paul Wahlbeck.
Download or read book What Justices Want written by Matthew E. K. Hall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-23 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how personality traits shape the behavior of US Supreme Court justices, proposing a new theory of judicial behavior.
Download or read book The Psychology of Judicial Decision Making written by David E. Klein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-08 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the years, psychologists have devoted uncountable hours to learning how human beings make judgments and decisions. As much progress as scholars have made in explaining what judges do over the past few decades, there remains a certain lack of depth to our understanding. Even where scholars can make consensual and successful predictions of a judge's behavior, they will often disagree sharply about exactly what happens in the judge's mind to generate the predicted result. This volume of essays examines the psychological processes that underlie judicial decision making.
Download or read book Friends of the Supreme Court Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making written by Paul M. Collins, Jr. and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-15 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Supreme Court is a public policy battleground in which organized interests attempt to etch their economic, legal, and political preferences into law through the filing of amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs. In Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making, Paul M. Collins, Jr. explores how organized interests influence the justices' decision making, including how the justices vote and whether they choose to author concurrences and dissents. Collins presents theories of judicial choice derived from disciplines as diverse as law, marketing, political science, and social psychology. This theoretically rich and empirically rigorous treatment of decision-making on the nation's highest court, which represents the most comprehensive examination ever undertaken of the influence of U.S. Supreme Court amicus briefs, provides clear evidence that interest groups play a significant role in shaping the justices' choices.
Download or read book Judges and Their Audiences written by Lawrence Baum and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description
Download or read book Oral Arguments and Decision Making on the United States Supreme Court written by Timothy R. Johnson and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2004-07-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How oral arguments influence the decisions of Supreme Court justices.
Download or read book Embedded Courts written by Kwai Hang Ng and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-26 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the decision-making process of Chinese courts and the non-legal forces and regional factors that influence judicial outcomes.
Download or read book Crafting Law on the Supreme Court written by Forrest Maltzman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-07-03 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Supreme Court decisions stem largely from the political nature of the opinion writing process.
Download or read book Open Judicial Politics written by Rorie Spill Solberg and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Choices Justices Make written by Lee Epstein and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Choices Justices Make is a groundbreaking work that offers a strategic account of Supreme Court decision making. Justices realize that their ability to achieve their policy and other goals depends on the preferences of other actors, the choices they expect others to make, and the institutional context in which they act. All these factors hold sway over justices as they make their decisions, from which cases to accept, to how to interact with their colleagues, and what policies to adopt in their opinions. Choices is a thought-provoking, yet nontechnical work that is an ideal supplement for judicial process and public law courses. In addition to offering a unique and sustained theoretical account, the authors tell a fascinating story of how the Court works. Data culled from the Court′s public records and from the private papers of Justices Brennan, Douglas, Marshall, and Powell provide empirical evidence to support the central argument, while numerous examples from the justices′ papers animate the work.
Download or read book Elements of Judicial Strategy written by Walter F. Murphy and published by Quid Pro Books. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Law Politics and Perception written by Eileen Braman and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2009-10-29 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are judges' decisions more likely to be based on personal inclinations or legal authority? The answer, Eileen Braman argues, is both. Law, Politics, and Perception brings cognitive psychology to bear on the question of the relative importance of norms of legal reasoning versus decision markers' policy preferences in legal decision-making. While Braman acknowledges that decision makers' attitudes—or, more precisely, their preference for policy outcomes—can play a significant role in judicial decisions, she also believes that decision-makers' belief that they must abide by accepted rules of legal analysis significantly limits the role of preferences in their judgements. To reconcile these competing factors, Braman posits that judges engage in "motivated reasoning," a biased process in which decision-makers are unconsciously predisposed to find legal authority that is consistent with their own preferences more convincing than those that go against them. But Braman also provides evidence that the scope of motivated reasoning is limited. Objective case facts and accepted norms of legal reasoning can often inhibit decision makers' ability to reach conclusions consistent with their preferences.
Download or read book Keeping Faith with the Constitution written by Goodwin Liu and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-05 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chief Justice John Marshall argued that a constitution "requires that only its great outlines should be marked [and] its important objects designated." Ours is "intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs." In recent years, Marshall's great truths have been challenged by proponents of originalism and strict construction. Such legal thinkers as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argue that the Constitution must be construed and applied as it was when the Framers wrote it. In Keeping Faith with the Constitution, three legal authorities make the case for Marshall's vision. They describe their approach as "constitutional fidelity"--not to how the Framers would have applied the Constitution, but to the text and principles of the Constitution itself. The original understanding of the text is one source of interpretation, but not the only one; to preserve the meaning and authority of the document, to keep it vital, applications of the Constitution must be shaped by precedent, historical experience, practical consequence, and societal change. The authors range across the history of constitutional interpretation to show how this approach has been the source of our greatest advances, from Brown v. Board of Education to the New Deal, from the Miranda decision to the expansion of women's rights. They delve into the complexities of voting rights, the malapportionment of legislative districts, speech freedoms, civil liberties and the War on Terror, and the evolution of checks and balances. The Constitution's framers could never have imagined DNA, global warming, or even women's equality. Yet these and many more realities shape our lives and outlook. Our Constitution will remain vital into our changing future, the authors write, if judges remain true to this rich tradition of adaptation and fidelity.
Download or read book Reconstructing Reality in the Courtroom written by W. Lance Bennett and published by Quid Pro Books. This book was released on 2014-03-13 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconstructing Reality in the Courtroom explains what makes stories believable and how ordinary people connect complex legal arguments and evidence presented in trials to assess guilt and innocence. The explanation takes the core elements of narrative—the who, what, where, when, how, why—and shows how average people who hear hundreds of stories every day use the connections between these elements to assess credibility. A series of simple experiments outside the courtroom provides evidence for the explanation, showing that there is little relationship between the actual truth of a story and the degree to which the story is believed to be true by an audience of random listeners not familiar with the teller. So, how do jurors make a particular legal judgment? Based on courtroom observation, trial transcripts, and credibility experiments, Bennett and Feldman create a method of diagramming stories that shows exactly what makes some stories more believable than others. Prosecutors and defense attorneys can use this method of analyzing stories to weigh the strategies and tactics available to them; scholars can use it to assess the process of legal judgment. Now in its Second Edition, this much-cited resource adds a new preface by the authors, as well as new forewords from divergent perspectives. From his experience in law practice, William S. Bailey notes that the book offers “timeless insights” as its authors “adapt a broad structural framework of storytelling to the criminal trial context, making it come alive in the dynamic real world courtroom environment.” Law-and-society scholar Anna-Maria Marshall writes that the book's “emphasis on storytelling will resonate with scholars studying legal consciousness, where narrative plays an important theoretical and methodological role.... This new edition will be a welcome addition to the Law and Society community.” "Reconstructing Reality in the Courtroom is as timely as it was when this classic was first published. Here Bennett and Feldman provide great insight into the importance of storytelling as a basis of justice in American criminal trials. It deserves very wide readership." — Elizabeth F. Loftus Distinguished Professor, University of California, Irvine Author, "Eyewitness Testimony" (1996) "This classic law and society study on the power of legal stories is a rich and compelling empirical analysis of the dynamics of story construction in trials. The book remains an essential resource for law students, litigators, academics, and any others who wish to understand the interpretive significance of the stories told in the courtroom." — Jeannine Bell Professor of Law and Neizer Faculty Fellow, Indiana University Maurer School of Law — Bloomington Author, "Hate Thy Neighbor" (2013) Part of the Classics of Law & Society Series from Quid Pro Books.
Download or read book Curbing the Court written by Brandon L. Bartels and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-20 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains when, why, and how citizens try to limit the Supreme Court's independence and power-- and why it matters.
Download or read book The Poor in Court written by Susan E. Lawrence and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the Supreme Court as an integral part of the policy-making process, Susan Lawrence examines how a change in who has access to the Court, and the nature of the institutions that structure that access, has affected its agenda setting and doctrinal development. In her analysis of cases sponsored by the Legal Services Program (LSP) before the Supreme Court during the 1966 through 1974 terms, she explores the effect of this agency in creating a voice for the poor in the judicial policy-making process. The Court's response to cases presented by the LSP--as exemplified in its decisions to invalidate residency requirements for welfare recipients (Shapiro v. Thompson, 1969) but uphold maximum family grants (Dandridge v. Williams, 1970)--is described as emerging from a timely combination of new litigant claims, available legal bases, and judicial values and role conceptions, all of which were shaped by the political climate of the era. Lawrence convincingly argues that litigation before the Court is a powerful method of political participation for the disadvantaged. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
