The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1111/j.0022-3816.2004.00301.x

The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited

Berry et al.'s (1998) measures of U.S. state citizen and government ideology rely on unadjusted interest-group ratings for a state's members of Congress to infer information about (1) the ideological orientation of the electorates that selected them or (2) state legislators and the governor from the same state. Potential weaknesses in unadjusted interest-group ratings prompt the question: Are the Berry et al. measures flawed, and if so, can they be fixed by substituting alternative measures of a member's ideology? We conclude that a version of the Berry et al. state government ideology indicator relying on NOMINATE common space scores is marginally superior to the extant version. In contrast, we reaffirm the validity of the original state citizen ideology indicator and find that versions based on NOMINATE common space scores and adjusted ADA and COPE scores introduced by Groseclose, Levitt, and Snyder (1999) are weaker.

Measuring Citizen and Government Ideology in the U.S. States: A Re-appraisal:

As public administration programs extend their online education offerings to reach more time- and place-bound students, and as accredited institutions become interested in documenting teaching and ...

Comparing the Effectiveness of Classroom and Online Learning: Teaching Research Methods

How do judges judge? Do they apply law to facts in a mechanical and deliberative way, as the formalists suggest they do, or do they rely on hunches and gut feelings, as the realists maintain? Debate has raged for decades, but researchers have offered little hard evidence in support of either model. Relying on empirical studies of judicial reasoning and decision making, we propose an entirely new model of judging that provides a more accurate explanation of judicial behavior. Our model accounts for the tendency of the human brain to make automatic, snap judgments, which are surprisingly accurate, but which can also lead to erroneous decisions. Equipped with a better understanding of judging, we then propose several reforms that should lead to more just and accurate outcomes.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1026414_code219969.pdf?abstractid=1026414&mirid=1&type=2

Blinking on the Bench: How Judges Decide Cases

Previous studies are in agreement that most appointments to the lower federal courts are the result of negotiations between the President and senators or other elites from the nominees' home state There is also widespread agreement that the votes of lower court judges reflect, in part, the value preferences of the President who appointed them, and the state or region of their appointment However, less is known about the relative influence of the President, the home state senators, and other home state forces on the decisions of these judges The present study investigates these relative influences with an examination of the decisions of judges on the United States Courts of Appeals from 1960-1993 Using refined measures of the policy preferences of Presidents and senators, along with a new measure of the voting behavior of Judges on the United States Courts of Appeals, we provide an assessment of the impact of the policy preferences of Presidents, compared to those of home state senators of each party, 

Assessing the impact of presidential and home state influences on judicial decisionmaking in the United States Courts of appeals

Some political scientists maintain that Supreme Court justices are more likely than other appellate court judges to vote their ideological preferences. It is argued that Supreme Court justices may vote their preferences without constraint from precedent because of a lack of electoral or political accountability, absence of ambition for higher office, and status as a member of a court of last resort that controls its own docket. While this expla nation of attitudinal voting is widely accepted, it has never been tested. As a first test of the asserted institutional foundations of attitudinal voting, the voting of United States Courts of Appeals judges in tort diversity cases is examined. In such cases, appeals court judges benefit from all of the institutional features thought to advance attitudinal voting, except complete docket control. Despite these benefits, the votes of the appeals court judges appear to be highly constrained by law and precedent.

Do Judges Follow the Law When There Is No Fear of Reversal

Televised election coverage is increasingly dominated by the horse race, a key element of which is poll coverage. How do news outlets decide which poll to air? We know little about the gatekeeping function of news outlets as it pertains to poll coverage, perhaps because this research is plagued by selection bias: By observing only reported polls and not unreported polls, researchers cannot definitively establish that any differences in representativeness are due to bias. Using a novel dataset that includes all prime-time presidential election poll coverage on Fox, MSNBC, CNN, and broadcast television networks during the 2008 election, we compare the universe of polls released each day to the polls actually covered by each news network. We find differences between the distribution of poll coverage and distribution of actual poll results. Our results suggest that both gatekeepers and reporters may have a hand in this distortion.

For whom the Poll Airs Comparing Poll Results to Television Poll Coverage

The advances in, and diffusion of, technology have resulted in a growth of online educational opportunities. While programs in public affairs are part of this proliferation in online education, the...

Online Education in Public Affairs: Current State and Emerging Issues

Focusing on litigators or amicus curiae, a significant amount of scholarship has examined the impact of information on Supreme Court decision making. Taking into account that justices have varying ...

Martha Humphries Ginn

Papers

Assessing the impact of presidential and home state influences on judicial decisionmaking in the United States Courts of appeals

Do Judges Follow the Law When There Is No Fear of Reversal

For whom the Poll Airs Comparing Poll Results to Television Poll Coverage

Online Education in Public Affairs: Current State and Emerging Issues

Examining the Effects of Information, Attorney Capability, and Amicus Participation on U.S. Supreme Court Decision Making: