Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T09:06:12.911Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Law, Politics, and Judicial Decision Making: Lower Federal Court Uses of Supreme Court Decisions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Charles A. Johnson
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Lower federal courts are crucial to the interpretation and implementation of Supreme Court decisions. Research demonstrates considerable variation in their responses to these decisions. Explanations of these responses are not well developed, and few efforts test competing hypotheses. My research tests the hypotheses derived from two models of lower court behavior—a legal model and a political model. The analysis demonstrates that the legal model accounts for more variation in the use of Supreme Court decisions by lower federal courts.

Type
Research Notes
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , 1987 , pp. 325 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

This paper is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant SES-8011040, “Analytic Techniques for Judicial Decision Research.” Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

References

BARBER, Kathleen (1969) “Partisan Values in the Lower Courts: Reapportionment in Ohio and Michigan,” 201 Case Western Reserve Law Review 401.Google Scholar
BAUM, Lawrence (1980) “Responses of Federal District Judges to Court of Appeals Policies: An Exploration,” 33 Western Political Quarterly 217.Google Scholar
BAUM, Lawrence (1978) “Lower-Court Response to Supreme Court Decisions: Reconsidering a Negative Picture,” 3 The Justice System Journal 208.Google Scholar
CANON, Bradley C. (1973) “Reactions of State Supreme Courts to a U.S. Supreme Court Civil Liberties Decision,” 8 Law and Society Review 109.Google Scholar
CARP, Robert, and C. K., ROWLAND (1983) Policymaking and Politics in the Federal District Courts. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
GIBSON, James (1980) “Environmental Constraints on the Behavior of Judges: A Representational Model of Judicial Decision Making,” 14 Law & Society Review 343.Google Scholar
GOLDMAN, Sheldon, and Thomas P., JAHNIGE (1985) The Federal Courts as a Political System. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
GRUHL, John (1980) “The Supreme Court's Impact on the Law of Libel: Compliance by Lower Federal Courts,” 33 Western Political Quarterly 502.Google Scholar
HOWARD, J. Woodford (1981) Courts of Appeals in the Federal Judicial System. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
JOHNSON, Charles A. (1981) “Personnel Change and Policy Change on the U.S. Supreme Court,” 62 Social Science Quarterly 751.Google Scholar
JOHNSON, Charles A. (1979) “Lower Court Reactions to Supreme Court Decisions: A Quantitative Examination,” 23 American Journal of Political Science 792.Google Scholar
JOHNSON, Charles A., and Bradley C., CANON (1984) Judicial Policies: Implementation and Impact. Washington DC: CQ Press.Google Scholar
JOHNSON, Richard (1967) Dynamics of Compliance. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
KORT, Fred (1973) “Regression Analysis and Discriminant Analysis: An Application of R. A. Fisher's Theorem to Data in Political Science,” 67 American Political Science Review 555.Google Scholar
LANDES, W. M., and R. A., POSNER (1976) “Legal Precedent: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis,” 19 Journal of Law and Economics 249.Google Scholar
LEVI, Edward (1949) An Introduction to Legal Reasoning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
MERRYMAN, John H. (1977) “Toward a Theory of Citations: An Empirical Study of the Citation Practice of the California Supreme Court in 1950, 1960, and 1970,” 50 Southern California Law Review 381.Google Scholar
NIE, Norman, et al. (1975) SPSS, 2nd Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
PELTASON, Jack (1961) Fifty-Eight Lonely Men. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.Google Scholar
RICHARDSON, Richard, and Kenneth, VINES (1970) The Politics of the Federal Courts: Lower Courts in the United States. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
ROMANS, Neil (1974) “Judicial Policy Making: Escobedo Miranda and the Use of Judicial Impact Analysis,” 27 Western Political Quarterly 38.Google Scholar
SEGAL, Jeff (1984) “Predicting Supreme Court Cases Probabilistically: The Search and Seizure Cases, 1962–1981,” 78 American Political Science Review 891.Google Scholar
TARR, G. Alan (1977) Judicial Impact and State Supreme Courts. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
ULMER, S. Sidney (1984) “The Supreme Court's Certiorari Decisions: ‘Conflict’ as a Predictive Variable,” 78 American Political Science Review 901.Google Scholar
ULMER, S. Sidney (1978) “Selecting Cases for Supreme Court Review: An Underdog Model,” 72 American Political Science Review 902.Google Scholar
WASBY, Stephen (1970) The Impact of the United States Supreme Court. Homewood, IL: Dorsey.Google Scholar
WASBY, Stephen (1973) “The Communication of the Supreme Court's Criminal Procedure Decisions: A Preliminary Mapping,” 18 Villanova Law Review 1086.Google Scholar
WOLD, John T. (1974) “Political Orientations, Social Backgrounds, and Role Perceptions of State Supreme Court Judges,” 27 Western Political Quarterly 239.Google Scholar