Judges and Their Audiences

Judges and Their Audiences PDF Author: Lawrence Baum
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140082754X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
What motivates judges as decision makers? Political scientist Lawrence Baum offers a new perspective on this crucial question, a perspective based on judges' interest in the approval of audiences important to them. The conventional scholarly wisdom holds that judges on higher courts seek only to make good law, good policy, or both. In these theories, judges are influenced by other people only in limited ways, in consequence of their legal and policy goals. In contrast, Baum argues that the influence of judges' audiences is pervasive. This influence derives from judges' interest in popularity and respect, a motivation central to most people. Judges care about the regard of audiences because they like that regard in itself, not just as a means to other ends. Judges and Their Audiences uses research in social psychology to make the case that audiences shape judges' choices in substantial ways. Drawing on a broad range of scholarship on judicial decision-making and an array of empirical evidence, the book then analyzes the potential and actual impact of several audiences, including the public, other branches of government, court colleagues, the legal profession, and judges' social peers. Engagingly written, this book provides a deeper understanding of key issues concerning judicial behavior on which scholars disagree, identifies aspects of judicial behavior that diverge from the assumptions of existing models, and shows how those models can be strengthened.

Judges and Their Audiences

Judges and Their Audiences PDF Author: Lawrence Baum
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140082754X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book Here

Book Description
What motivates judges as decision makers? Political scientist Lawrence Baum offers a new perspective on this crucial question, a perspective based on judges' interest in the approval of audiences important to them. The conventional scholarly wisdom holds that judges on higher courts seek only to make good law, good policy, or both. In these theories, judges are influenced by other people only in limited ways, in consequence of their legal and policy goals. In contrast, Baum argues that the influence of judges' audiences is pervasive. This influence derives from judges' interest in popularity and respect, a motivation central to most people. Judges care about the regard of audiences because they like that regard in itself, not just as a means to other ends. Judges and Their Audiences uses research in social psychology to make the case that audiences shape judges' choices in substantial ways. Drawing on a broad range of scholarship on judicial decision-making and an array of empirical evidence, the book then analyzes the potential and actual impact of several audiences, including the public, other branches of government, court colleagues, the legal profession, and judges' social peers. Engagingly written, this book provides a deeper understanding of key issues concerning judicial behavior on which scholars disagree, identifies aspects of judicial behavior that diverge from the assumptions of existing models, and shows how those models can be strengthened.

US Supreme Court Opinions and their Audiences

US Supreme Court Opinions and their Audiences PDF Author: Ryan C. Black
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316682056
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
This book is the first study specifically to investigate the extent to which US Supreme Court justices alter the clarity of their opinions based on expected reactions from their audiences. The authors examine this dynamic by creating a unique measure of opinion clarity and then testing whether the Court writes clearer opinions when it faces ideologically hostile and ideologically scattered lower federal courts; when it decides cases involving poorly performing federal agencies; when it decides cases involving states with less professionalized legislatures and governors; and when it rules against public opinion. The data shows the Court writes clearer opinions in every one of these contexts, and demonstrates that actors are more likely to comply with clearer Court opinions.

Creating the Law

Creating the Law PDF Author: Michael K. Romano
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429867867
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Written opinions are the primary means by which judges communicate with external actors. These sentiments include the parties to the case itself, but also more broadly journalists, public officials, lawyers, other judges, and increasingly, the mass public. In Creating the Law, Michael K. Romano and Todd A. Curry examine the extent to which judges tailor their language in order to avoid retribution during their retention, and how institutional variations involving intra-chamber dynamics may influence the written word of a legal opinion. Using an extensive dataset that includes the text of all death penalty and education decisions issued by state supreme courts from 1995–2010, Romano and Curry are the first to examine the connection between retention incentives and language choices. They utilize text analysis techniques developed in the field of communications and apply them to the text of judicial decisions. In doing so, they find that judges write with their audience in mind, and emphasize duelling strategies of justification and persuasion in order to please diverse audiences that may be paying attention. Furthermore, the process of drafting a majority opinion is a team exercise, and when more individuals are involved in its crafting, the product will reflect this complexity. This book gives students the tools for understanding how institutional variation affects judicial outcomes and shows how language relates to decision-making in the judiciary more specifically.

Judicial Reputation

Judicial Reputation PDF Author: Nuno Garoupa
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022629059X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
In "Judicial Reputation: A Comparative Theory, "Tom Ginsburg and Nuno Garoupa mean to explain how judges respond to the reputational incentives provided by the different audiences they interact with--lawyers and law professors; politicians; the media; and the public itself--as well as how legal systems design their judicial institutions to calibrate the locally appropriate balance among audiences. Making use by turns of careful empirical work and penetrating conceptual insights, Ginsburg and Garoupa argue that any given judicial structure is best understood not through the lens of legal culture, origin, or tradition, but through the economics of information and reputation.

The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Judicial Behavior

The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Judicial Behavior PDF Author: Lee Epstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019957989X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 625

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Judicial Behavior offers readers a comprehensive introduction and analysis of research regarding decision making by judges serving on federal and state courts in the U.S. Featuring contributions from leading scholars in the field, the Handbook describes and explains how the courts' political and social context, formal institutional structures, and informal norms affect judicial decision making. The Handbook also explores the impact of judges' personal attributes and preferences, as well as prevailing legal doctrine, influence, and shape case outcomes in state and federal courts. The volume also proposes avenues for future research in the various topics addressed throughout the book. Consultant Editor for The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics George C. Edwards III.

Scoring Points

Scoring Points PDF Author: Nancy Scherer
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804749497
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
This book explores how the lower federal court appointment process became vastly politicized in the modern era. Scherer develops a theory of “elite mobilization,” positing that lower court appointments have always been used by politicians for electoral purposes, but because of two historic changes to American institutions in the 1950s and 1960s—the breakdown of the old party system, and a federal judiciary reception to expanding individuals’ constitutional rights—politicians shifted from an appointment system dominated by patronage to a system dominated by new policy-oriented appointment strategies. The use of these new strategies not only resulted in partisan warfare during the nomination and confirmation stages of the appointment process, but also led to party-polarized voting in the lower federal courts. Employing exclusive data of judicial decision-making from the New Deal era through the present, Scherer demonstrates that there was little party-polarized voting in the lower federal courts until the late 1960s, and that once politicians began to use elite mobilization strategies, significant party-polarized voting in the lower federal courts resulted. Accordingly, elite mobilization strategies have affected not only politics in Washington, but also the way justice is distributed across the country.

How Judges Judge

How Judges Judge PDF Author: Brian M. Barry
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429657498
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
A judge’s role is to make decisions. This book is about how judges undertake this task. It is about forces on the judicial role and their consequences, about empirical research from a variety of academic disciplines that observes and verifies how factors can affect how judges judge. On the one hand, judges decide by interpreting and applying the law, but much more affects judicial decision-making: psychological effects, group dynamics, numerical reasoning, biases, court processes, influences from political and other institutions, and technological advancement. All can have a bearing on judicial outcomes. In How Judges Judge: Empirical Insights into Judicial Decision-Making, Brian M. Barry explores how these factors, beyond the law, affect judges in their role. Case examples, judicial rulings, judges’ own self-reflections on their role and accounts from legal history complement this analysis to contextualise the research, make it more accessible and enrich the reader’s understanding and appreciation of judicial decision-making. Offering research-based insights into how judges make the decisions that can impact daily life and societies around the globe, this book will be of interest to practising and training judges, litigation lawyers and those studying law and related disciplines.

US Supreme Court Opinions and their Audiences

US Supreme Court Opinions and their Audiences PDF Author: Ryan C. Black
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107137144
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
An investigation of how US Supreme Court justices alter the clarity of their opinions based on expected reactions from their audiences.

The Behavior of Federal Judges

The Behavior of Federal Judges PDF Author: Lee Epstein
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674070682
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 491

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Book Description
Judges play a central role in the American legal system, but their behavior as decision-makers is not well understood, even among themselves. The system permits judges to be quite secretive (and most of them are), so indirect methods are required to make sense of their behavior. Here, a political scientist, an economist, and a judge work together to construct a unified theory of judicial decision-making. Using statistical methods to test hypotheses, they dispel the mystery of how judicial decisions in district courts, circuit courts, and the Supreme Court are made. The authors derive their hypotheses from a labor-market model, which allows them to consider judges as they would any other economic actors: as self-interested individuals motivated by both the pecuniary and non-pecuniary aspects of their work. In the authors' view, this model describes judicial behavior better than either the traditional “legalist” theory, which sees judges as automatons who mechanically apply the law to the facts, or the current dominant theory in political science, which exaggerates the ideological component in judicial behavior. Ideology does figure into decision-making at all levels of the federal judiciary, the authors find, but its influence is not uniform. It diminishes as one moves down the judicial hierarchy from the Supreme Court to the courts of appeals to the district courts. As The Behavior of Federal Judges demonstrates, the good news is that ideology does not extinguish the influence of other components in judicial decision-making. Federal judges are not just robots or politicians in robes.

Judges

Judges PDF Author: Andrea Camillieri
Publisher: MacLehose Press
ISBN: 1623656303
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Incorporating distinct traditions and styles of crime writing, the three novellas in Judges are united by a theme of idealistic judges in an often futile struggle against crime and corruption. Andrea Camilleri's novella recounts the charming Judge Surra. Leaving his family behind, Surra arrives in the 19th-century Sicilian town of Montelusa from Turin and is given quirky gifts from the locals, but is oblivious to the veiled threats accompanying them. Finally forced to contend with a hostile community and an imminent attempt on his life, Surra proves he is relentless in his quest for justice. Carlo Lucarelli's novella presents a darkly hued Bologna in the 1980s, where judges are frequent targets of assassination attempts. The protagonist, Judge Valentina Lorenzi--"La Bambina"--stumbles upon an extensive money laundering operation involving prominent public officials. Determined to nip Valentina's investigations in the bud, the criminals attack the judge and leave her clinging to life. Ultimately, Valentina is faced with a troubling question: will she break her vow to uphold the letter of the law in order to bring those responsible to justice? The final novella, The Triple Dream of the Prosecutor, by judge and novelist Giancarlo De Cataldo, teeters between dream and reality. Prosecutor Mandati is engaged in a life-long feud with the corrupt mayor of Novere, and his efforts finally pay off on the night before the trial of his life. Kafkaesque, tumultuous, and thoroughly gripping.