Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T13:41:07.421Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Future Matters: Judicial Preferences Over Legal Rules and Decision-Making on Collegial Courts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Caitlin Ainsley ,
Cliff Carrubba  and
Georg Vanberg
Caitlin Ainsley
Affiliation:
University of Washington, USA
Cliff Carrubba
Affiliation:
Emory University, USA
Georg Vanberg*
Affiliation:
Duke University, USA
*
Contact the corresponding author, Georg Vanberg, at [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

High courts such as the US Supreme Court announce legal rules that guide subsequent decisions by lower courts and other actors. Because legal rules are forward-looking in this sense, judges’ expectations about the distribution of future cases are critical. Focusing on this fact, we provide microfoundations for judicial preferences over legal rules by deriving them directly from expectations about the distribution of future cases. Doing so has important consequences: in contrast to standard assumptions in models of judicial decision-making, preferences over legal rules are asymmetric rather than symmetric. We demonstrate that this has significant implications for judicial decision-making on collegial courts. Finally, we show that changes in the case distribution—for example, as a result of technological change—can lead to significant legal change, even in the absence of ideological or doctrinal change on the court.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , Spring 2021 , pp. 1 - 25
Copyright
© 2021 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We would like to thank Kevin McGuire, Chuck Cameron, Lewis Kornhauser, and John Kastellec for comments on earlier versions of this article.

References

Ainsley, Caitlin. 2017. “The Politics of Central Bank Appointments.” Journal of Politics 79 1205–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron, David P., and Ferejohn, John A. 1989. “Bargaining in Legislatures.” American Political Science Review 83 (4): 1181–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benjamin, Stuart, and Bruce, Desmarais., 2012. “Standing the Test of Time: The Breadth of Majority Coalitions and the Fate of US Supreme Court Precedents.” Journal of Legal Analysis 4 445–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, Duncan. 1948. “On the Rationale of Group Decision-Making.” Journal of Political Economy 56 (1): 23–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonneau, Chris W., Hammond, Thomas H. Forrest, >Maltzman, and Wahlbeck, Paul J. 2007. “Agenda Control, the Median Justice, and the Majority Opinion on the U.S. Supreme Court.” American Journal of Political Science 51 (4): 890–905.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Charles M., and Kornhauser, Lewis. 2016. “A Primer on Case Space.” Presented at the Princeton Conference on the Political Economy of Judicial Politics, Princeton, NJ June.Google Scholar
Carrubba, Cliff, Friedman, Barry, Martin, Andrew, and Vanberg, Georg. 2012. “Who Controls the Content of Supreme Court Opinions?” American Journal of Political Science 56 (2): 400–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Tom, and Lauderdale, Benjamin. 2010. “Locating Supreme Court Opinions in Doctrine Space.” American Journal of Political Science 54 871–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Tom, and Lauderdale, Benjamin. 2012. “The Genealogy of Law.” Political Analysis 20 329–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Lee, Hoe, Daniel, King, Gary, and Segal, Jeffrey. 2005. “The Supreme Court during Crisis: How War Affects Only Non-war Cases.” New York University Law Review 80 1–116.Google Scholar
Fox, Justin, and Vanberg, Georg. 2014. “Narrow versus Broad Judicial Decisions.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 26 355–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammond, Thomas, Bonneau, Chris, and Sheehan, Reginald. 2005. Strategic Behavior and Policy Choice on the US Supreme Court. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansford, Thomas, and Spriggs, James. 2006. The Politics of Precedent on the US Supreme Court. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kornhauser, Lewis. 1992. “Modeling Collegial Courts I: Path Dependence.” International Review of Law and Economics 12 169–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laver, Michael, de Marchi, Scott, and Mutlu, Hande. 2011. “Negotiation in Legislatures over Government Formation.” Public Choice 147 (3–4): 285–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lax, Jeffrey R. 2007. “Constructing Legal Rules on Appellate Courts.” American Political Science Review 101 591–604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lax, Jeffrey R.. 2011. “The New Judicial Politics of Legal Doctrine.” Annual Review of Political Science 14 131–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lax, Jeffrey R.. 2012. “Political Constraints on Legal Doctrine: How Hierarchy Shapes the Law.” Journal of Politics 74 765–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lax, Jeffrey R., and Cameron, Charles. 2007. “Bargaining and Opinion Assignment on the US Supreme Court.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 23 276–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lax, Jeffrey R., and Rader, Kelly. 2015. “Bargaining Power in the Supreme Court: Evidence from Opinion Assignment and Vote Switching.” Journal of Politics 77 (3): 648–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maltzman, Forrest, Spriggs II, James F., and Wahlbeck, Paul J. 2000. Crafting Law on the Supreme Court. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Andrew D., Quinn, Kevin M., and Epstein, Lee. 2005. “The Median Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.” North Carolina Law Review 83 (5): 1275–322.Google Scholar
Romer, Thomas, and Rosenthal, Howard. 1978. “Political Resource Allocation, Controlled Agendas, and the Status Quo.” Public Choice 33 (4): 27–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shutte, Rachel. 2015. “Compromise and Control in the Collegial Development of US Supreme Court Majority Opinions.” PhD diss., Michigan State University.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Ainsley et al. Supplementary material
Download undefined(File)
File 390.2 KB