The Puzzle of Judicial Behavior

The Puzzle of Judicial Behavior PDF Author: Lawrence Baum
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472022636
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
From local trial courts to the United States Supreme Court, judges' decisions affect the fates of individual litigants and the fate of the nation as a whole. Scholars have long discussed and debated explanations of judicial behavior. This book examines the major issues in the debates over how best to understand judicial behavior and assesses what we actually know about how judges decide cases. It concludes that we are far from understanding why judges choose the positions they take in court. Lawrence Baum considers three issues in examining judicial behavior. First, the author considers the balance between the judges' interest in the outcome of particular cases and their interest in other goals such as personal popularity and lighter workloads. Second, Baum considers the relative importance of good law and good policy as bases for judges' choices. Finally Baum looks at the extent to which judges act strategically, choosing their own positions after taking into account the positions that their fellow judges and other policy makers might adopt. Baum argues that the evidence on each of these issues is inconclusive and that there remains considerable room for debate about the sources of judges' decisions. Baum concludes that this lack of resolution is not the result of weaknesses in the scholarship but from the difficulty in explaining human behavior. He makes a plea for diversity in research. This book will be of interest to political scientists and scholars in law and courts as well as attorneys who are interested in understanding judges as decision makers and who want to understand what we can learn from scholarly research about judicial behavior. Lawrence Baum is Professor of Political Science, Ohio State University.

The Puzzle of Judicial Behavior

The Puzzle of Judicial Behavior PDF Author: Lawrence Baum
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472022636
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Get Book

Book Description
From local trial courts to the United States Supreme Court, judges' decisions affect the fates of individual litigants and the fate of the nation as a whole. Scholars have long discussed and debated explanations of judicial behavior. This book examines the major issues in the debates over how best to understand judicial behavior and assesses what we actually know about how judges decide cases. It concludes that we are far from understanding why judges choose the positions they take in court. Lawrence Baum considers three issues in examining judicial behavior. First, the author considers the balance between the judges' interest in the outcome of particular cases and their interest in other goals such as personal popularity and lighter workloads. Second, Baum considers the relative importance of good law and good policy as bases for judges' choices. Finally Baum looks at the extent to which judges act strategically, choosing their own positions after taking into account the positions that their fellow judges and other policy makers might adopt. Baum argues that the evidence on each of these issues is inconclusive and that there remains considerable room for debate about the sources of judges' decisions. Baum concludes that this lack of resolution is not the result of weaknesses in the scholarship but from the difficulty in explaining human behavior. He makes a plea for diversity in research. This book will be of interest to political scientists and scholars in law and courts as well as attorneys who are interested in understanding judges as decision makers and who want to understand what we can learn from scholarly research about judicial behavior. Lawrence Baum is Professor of Political Science, Ohio State University.

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.

Routledge Handbook of Judicial Behavior

Routledge Handbook of Judicial Behavior PDF Author: Robert M. Howard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317430387
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
Interest in social science and empirical analyses of law, courts and specifically the politics of judges has never been higher or more salient. Consequently, there is a strong need for theoretical work on the research that focuses on courts, judges and the judicial process. The Routledge Handbook of Judicial Behavior provides the most up to date examination of scholarship across the entire spectrum of judicial politics and behavior, written by a combination of currently prominent scholars and the emergent next generation of researchers. Unlike almost all other volumes, this Handbook examines judicial behavior from both an American and Comparative perspective. Part 1 provides a broad overview of the dominant Theoretical and Methodological perspectives used to examine and understand judicial behavior, Part 2 offers an in-depth analysis of the various current scholarly areas examining the U.S. Supreme Court, Part 3 moves from the Supreme Court to examining other U.S. federal and state courts, and Part 4 presents a comprehensive overview of Comparative Judicial Politics and Transnational Courts. Each author in this volume provides perspectives on the most current methodological and substantive approaches in their respective areas, along with suggestions for future research. The chapters contained within will generate additional scholarly and public interest by focusing on topics most salient to the academic, legal and policy communities.

The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior

The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior PDF Author: Nancy Maveety
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
DIVExamines the contributions of the "pioneers" of research into judicial behavior /div

Judicial Behavior

Judicial Behavior PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Judicial process
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description


The Strategic Analysis of Judicial Behavior

The Strategic Analysis of Judicial Behavior PDF Author: Lee Epstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009058738
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 101

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Book Description
The past decade has witnessed a worldwide explosion of work aimed at illuminating judicial-behavior: the choices judges make and the consequences of their choices. We focus on strategic accounts of judicial-behavior. As in other approaches to judging, preferences and institutions play a central role but strategic accounts are unique in one important respect: They draw attention to the interdependent - i.e., the strategic - nature of judicial decisions. On strategic accounts, judges do not make decisions in a vacuum, but rather attend to the preferences and likely actions of other actors, including their colleagues, superiors, politicians, and the public. We survey the major methodological approaches for conducting strategic analysis and consider how scholars have used them to provide insight into the effect of internal and external actors on the judges' choices. As far as these studies have traveled in illuminating judicial-behavior, many opportunities for forward movement remain. We flag four in the conclusion.

The Puzzle of Unanimity

The Puzzle of Unanimity PDF Author: Pamela C. Corley
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804786321
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
The U.S. Supreme Court typically rules on cases that present complex legal questions. Given the challenging nature of its cases and the popular view that the Court is divided along ideological lines, it's commonly assumed that the Court routinely hands down equally-divided decisions. Yet the justices actually issue unanimous decisions in approximately one third of the cases they decide. Drawing on data from the U.S. Supreme Court database, internal court documents, and the justices' private papers, The Puzzle of Unanimity provides the first comprehensive account of how the Court reaches consensus. Pamela Corley, Amy Steigerwalt, and Artemus Ward propose and empirically test a theory of consensus; they find consensus is a function of multiple, concurrently-operating forces that cannot be fully accounted for by ideological attitudes. In this thorough investigation, the authors conclude that consensus is a function of the level of legal certainty and its ability to constrain justices' ideological preferences.

Quantitative Analysis of Judicial Behavior

Quantitative Analysis of Judicial Behavior PDF Author: Glendon A. Schubert
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Judicial process
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description


The Behavior of Federal Judges

The Behavior of Federal Judges PDF Author: Lee Epstein
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674067320
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
Federal judges are not just robots or politicians in robes, yet their behavior is not well understood, even among themselves. Using statistical methods, a political scientist, an economist, and a judge construct a unified theory of judicial decision-making to dispel the mystery of how decisions from district courts to the Supreme Court are made.

Instructions, Verdicts, and Judicial Behavior

Instructions, Verdicts, and Judicial Behavior PDF Author: Robert M. Krivoshey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135557977
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
First Published in 1994. Volume 4 in the 4-volume anthology of scholarly articles titled Readings in Trial Advocacy and the Social Sciences; a series seeking to increase our understanding of courtroom dynamics. This fourth volume consists of six jury instructions, six verdicts and two articles on judicial behaviour. These collection raises issues ranging from ability of jurors to understand judicial instructions to the ability of attorneys to predict the outcome of pending litigation.