Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T00:25:22.621Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rules, Standards, and Lower Court Decisions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Joseph L. Smith  and
James A. Todd
Joseph L. Smith
Affiliation:
University of Alabama
James A. Todd*
Affiliation:
University of Alabama
*
Contact the corresponding author, James A. Todd, at [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper evaluates the impact of a higher court articulating doctrine as either a “rule” or a “standard.” The legal doctrine we evaluate concerns police searches based upon information supplied by confidential informants. The Supreme Court’s Aguilar-Spinelli test was a rule, and its Illinois v. Gates “totality of the circumstances” test is a standard. Using a data set of circuit court opinions from 1951 to 1999, we compare circuit-level implementation of these two doctrines. The results suggest that rules are more effective than standards at constraining ideological voting in lower courts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Fall 2015 , pp. 257 - 275
Copyright
© 2015 by 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

An earlier version of this paper was presented on a panel at the 2012 annual conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois. The authors would like to acknowledge the valuable comments of Michael Salamone and Christopher Parker on that panel.

References

Baker, Scott, and Kim, Pauline T.. 2012. “A Dynamic Model of Doctrinal Choice.” Journal of Legal Analysis 4 (2): 329–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baum, Lawrence. 1976. “The Implementation of Judicial Decisions: An Organizational Analysis.” American Politics Research 4 (1): 86–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baum, Lawrence. 1977–78. “Lower Court Response to Supreme Court Decisions: Reconsidering a Negative Picture.” Justice System Journal 3 (Spring): 208–19.Google Scholar
Baum, Lawrence. 1994. “What Judges Want: Judges’ Goals and Judicial Behavior.” Political Research Quarterly 47 (3): 749–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benesh, Sara C. 2002. The U.S. Courts of Appeals and the Law of Confessions: Perspectives on the Hierarchy of Justice. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing.Google Scholar
Benesh, Sarah C., and Malia Reddick. 2002. “Overruled: An Event History Analysis of Lower Court Reaction to Supreme Court Alteration of Precedent.” Journal of Politics 64 (2): 534–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, Christina L. 2010. “Federal District Court Judge Ideology Data.” In Christina L. Boyd, University of Georgia. http://cLboyd.net/ideology.html.Google Scholar
Carp, Robert A., and Ronald Stidham. 1985. The Federal Courts. Washington, DC: CQ Press.Google Scholar
Combs, Michael W. 1982. “The Policy-Making Role of Courts of Appeals in Northern School Desegregation: Ambiguity and Judicial Policy-Making.” Western Political Quarterly 35 (3): 359–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corley, Pamela. 2009. “Uncertain Precedent: Circuit Court Responses to Supreme Court Plurality Opinions.” American Politics Research 37:30–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cross, Frank B. 2003. “Decisionmaking in the US Circuit Courts of Appeals.” California Law Review 91 (6): 1457–1515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cross, Frank B., Tonja Jacobi, and Emerson Tiller. 2012. “A Positive Political Theory of Rules and Standards.” University of Illinois Law Review 2012 (1): 1–42.Google Scholar
Cross, Frank B., and Emerson Tiller. 1998. “Judicial Partisanship and Obedience to Legal Doctrine: Whistleblowing on the Federal Courts of Appeals.” Yale Law Journal 107 (7): 2155–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eakins, Keith R., and Karen Swenson. 2007. “An Analysis of the States’ Responses to Republican Party of Minnesota v. White.” Justice System Journal 28 (3): 371–84.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee, Martin, Andrew D., Segal, Jeffrey A., and Chad Westerland. 2007. “The Judicial Common Space.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 23 (2): 303–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Federal Judicial Center. 2007.Federal Judges Biographical Database. http://www.fjc.gov/public/home.nsf/hisj.Google Scholar
Feldman, Yuval, and Alon Harel. 2008. “Social Norms, Self-Interest and Ambiguity of Legal Norms: An Experimental Analysis of the Rules vs. Standards Dilemma.” Review of Law and Economics 4 (1): 81–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giles, Michael W., Hettinger, Virginia A., and Todd Peppers. 2001. “Picking Federal Judges: A Note on Policy and Partisan Selection Agendas.” Political Research Quarterly 54 (September): 623–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, Sheldon. 1975. “Voting Behavior on the United States Courts of Appeals Revisited.” American Political Science Review 69 (2): 491–506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gruhl, John. 1980. “The Supreme Court’s Impact on the Law of Libel: Compliance by Lower Federal Courts.” Western Political Quarterly 33 (4): 502–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gruhl, John. 1981. “Anticipatory Compliance with Supreme Court Rulings.” Polity 14 (2): 294–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansford, Thomas G., and Spriggs, James F. II. 2006. The Politics of Precedent in the U.S. Supreme Court. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hettinger, Virginia A., Lindquist, Stefanie A., and Martinek, Wendy L.. 2004. “Comparing Attitudinal and Strategic Accounts of Dissenting Behavior on the U.S. Courts of Appeals.” American Journal of Political Science 48 (1): 123–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huff, John Mark. 2009. “Warrantless Entries and Searches under Exigent Circumstances: Why Are They Justified and What Types of Circumstances Are Considered Exigent?” University of Detroit–Mercy Law Review 87 (3): 373–414.Google Scholar
Jacobi, Tonja, and Tiller, Emerson H.. 2007. “Legal Doctrine and Political Control.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 23 (2): 326–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Charles A. 1987. “Law, Politics, and Judicial Decision Making: Lower Federal Court Uses of Supreme Court Decisions.” Law and Society Review 21 (2): 325–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, Duncan. 1976. “Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication.” Harvard Law Review 89 (3): 1685–1778.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, David E., and Hume, Robert J.. 2003. “Fear of Reversal as an Explanation of Lower Court Compliance.” Law and Society Review 37 (3): 579–606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kornhauser, Lewis A. 1994–95. “Adjudication by a Resource-Constrained Team: Hierarchy and Precedent in a Judicial System.” University of California Law Review 68:1605–29.Google Scholar
Kritzer, Herbert, and Richards, Mark J.. 2005. “The Influence of Law in the Supreme Court’s Search-and-Seizure Jurisprudence.” American Politics Research 33 (1): 33–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lax, Jeffrey R. 2007. “Constructing Legal Rules on Appellate Courts.” American Political Science Review 101 (3): 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 (3): 765–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luse, Jennifer K., Geoffrey McGovern, Martinek, Wendy L., and Benesh, Sara C.. 2009. “Such Inferior Courts: Compliance by Circuits with Jurisprudential Regimes.” American Politics Research 37 (1): 75–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poole, Keith. 1998. “Estimating a Basic Space from a Set of Issue Scales.” American Journal of Political Science 42 (July): 954–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poole, Keith. 2009. “Common Space Scores, Congresses 75–110 (January 6, 2009).” http://voteview.com/basic.htm.Google Scholar
Posner, Richard A. 2008. How Judges Think. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Richards, Mark J., and Herbert Kritzer. 2002. “Jurisprudential Regimes and Supreme Court Decisionmaking.” American Political Science Review 96:305–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richards, Mark J. 2003. “Jurisprudential Regimes and Supreme Court Decisionmaking: The Lemon Regime and Establishment Clause Cases.” Law and Society Review 37 (4): 827–40.Google Scholar
Smith, Joseph L., and Tiller, Emerson H.. 2002. “The Strategy of Judging: Evidence from Administrative Law.” Journal of Legal Studies 31 (1): 61–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Songer, Donald, Jeffrey Segal, and Charles Cameron. 1994. “The Hierarchy of Justice: Testing a Principal-Agent Model of Supreme Court–Circuit Court Interactions.” American Journal of Political Science 38 (3): 673–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Songer, Donald, and Sheehan, Reginald S.. 1990. “Supreme Court Impact on Compliance and Outcomes: Miranda and New York Times in the United States Courts of Appeals.” Western Political Quarterly 43 (June): 297–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spriggs, James F., II. 1997. “Explaining Bureaucratic Compliance with Supreme Court Opinions.” Political Research Quarterly 50 (3): 567–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staton, Jeffrey K., and Georg Vanberg. 2008. “The Value of Vagueness: Delegation, Defiance, and Judicial Opinions.” American Journal of Political Science 52 (3): 504–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, Kathleen. 1992. “The Supreme Court, 1991 Term—Foreword: The Justices of Rules and Standards.” Harvard Law Review 106 (1): 22–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tiller, Emerson H., and Cross, Frank B.. 2006. “What Is Legal Doctrine?” Northwestern University Law Review 100 (1): 517–34.Google Scholar
Twerski, Aaron D. 1982. “Seizing the Middle Ground between Rules and Standards in Design Defect Litigation: Advancing Directed Verdict Practice in the Law of Torts.” New York University Law Review 57 (3): 521–96.Google Scholar
Westerland, Chad, Segal, Jeffrey A., Lee Epstein, Cameron, Charles M., and Scott Camparato. 2010. “Strategic Defiance and Compliance in the U.S. Courts of Appeals.” American Journal of Political Science 54 (4): 891–905.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zorn, Christopher. 2005. “A Solution to Separation in Binary Response Models.” Political Analysis 13 (2): 157–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zorn, Christopher, and Jennifer Barnes Bowie. 2010. “Ideological Influences on Decision Making in the Federal Judicial Hierarchy: An Empirical Assessment.” Journal of Politics 72 (4): 1212–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar