Showing papers by "Donald R. Songer published in 1992"

Who Wins on Appeal? Upperdogs and Underdogs in the United States Courts of Appeals

Abstract: The central focus of this investigation is the effect of litigation resources on the success of appellants appearing before the United States Courts of Appeals. The analysis parallels the earlier study by Wheeler et al. (1987) of who wins in state supreme courts. The findings are that litigation resources are much more strongly related to appellant success in the courts of appeals than in either the United States or state supreme courts. Upperdog litigants win much more frequently in the courts of appeals in both published and unpublished decisions of the courts of appeals even after controls are introduced for partisan and regional effects and the differences among types of cases.

Ideology, Status, and The Differential Success of Direct Parties Before the Supreme Court

Abstract: A substantial literature on lower federal courts and state courts suggests that the "haves" usually come out ahead in litigation because they possess superior resources for it and they reap advantages from their repeat player status. We investigate the success of 10 categories of litigants before the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts to determine whether the resources or experience of litigants has effects on Supreme Court outcomes paralleling those found in the courts below. While different categories of litigants are found to have very different rates of success, those differences do not consistently favor litigants with greater resources. A time series analysis of the success of different categories of litigants over the 36 years studied suggests that the changing ideological complexion of the Court has a greater impact on the success of litigants than differences among litigants in resources and experience. W e examine the impact of litigant status and the changing ideology of the U.S. Supreme Court on differences in the success rates of direct parties before the Court. Simply, we seek to explain why some categories of litigants win more frequently than others when appearing before the Court. Previous explanations have attributed differential success rates in lower federal courts to, inter alia, disparities between litigants of different status in judicial experience and resources. We argue, however, that differential success rates in Supreme Court decisions have more to do with the ideological composition of the Court and the Court's receptivity to the different types of legal claims made by litigants of different status. Previous research indicates that the status of litigants before American courts has substantial influence on judicial outcomes. Higher-status parties enjoy significant advantages in appellate courts and usually win. This has been demonstrated in the U.S. courts of appeals (Sheehan and Songer 1989) and, to a lesser degree, in state supreme courts (Wheeler et al. 1987). Curiously, the impact of litigant status on

Integrating Alternative Approaches to the Study of Judicial Voting: Obscenity Cases in the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Abstract: This analysis explored the relative impact of various influences on judges' votes in obscenity decisions of the United States Courts of Appeals. It builds upon previous studies that have examined separately the effects of political attitudes, case characteristics, nature of the parties, changing Supreme Court precedent, and defenses raised by litigants. When examined individually, 18 variables from these five approaches were related to a statistically significant extent to judicial votes, but each variable still left much of the variance unexplained. To assess the relative contributions of each of the previously used approaches, an integrated multivariate model was created that combined the five approaches. This overall model correctly predicted close to 80% of the judges' votes with a reduction in error of 46%.