In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1994, Vol 39(2), 225. Reviews the book, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992). The author's commendable effort to specify a model of mass opinion formation offers readers an introduction to the prevailing vi

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.

Scholars of culture, humanities and social sciences have increasingly come to an appreciation of the importance of the legal domain in social life, while critically engaged socio-legal scholars around the world have taken up the task of understanding "Law's Empire" in all of its cultural, political, and economic dimensions. The questions arising from these intersections, and addressing imperialisms past and present forms the subject matter of a special symposium issue of Social Identities under the editorship of Griffith University's Rob McQueen, and UBC's Wes Pue and with contributions from McQueen, Ian Duncanson, Renisa Mawani, David Williams, Emma Cunliffe, Chidi Oguamanam, W. Wesley Pue, Fatou Camara, and Dianne Kirkby. This paper introduces the volume, forthcoming in late 2007. The central problematique of this issue has previously been explored through the 2005 Law's Empire conference, an informal but vibrant postcolonial legal studies network.

Law's Empire

Since Beck, Katz, and Tucker (1998), the standard method for modeling time dependence in binary data has been to incorporate time dummies or splined time in logistic regressions. Although we agree with the need for modeling time dependence, we demonstrate that time dummies can induce estimation problems due to separation. Splines do not suffer from these problems. However, the complexity of splines has led substantive researchers (1) to use knot values that may be inappropriate for their data and (2) to ignore any substantive discussion concerning temporal dependence. We propose a relatively simple alternative: including t, t 2 , and t 3 in the regression. This cubic polynomial approximation is trivial to implement—and, therefore, interpret—and it avoids problems such as quasi-complete separation. Monte Carlo analysis demonstrates that, for the types of hazards one often sees in substantive research, the polynomial approximation always outperforms time dummies and generally performs as well as splines or even more flexible autosmoothing procedures. Due to its simplicity, this method also accommodates nonproportional hazards in a straightforward way. We reanalyze Crowley and Skocpol (2001) using nonproportional hazards and find new empirical support for the historical-institutionalist perspective.

/pdf/back-to-the-future-modeling-time-dependence-in-binary-data-51zbd54rc2.pdf

Back to the Future: Modeling Time Dependence in Binary Data

Study in administration

Public support for political actors and institutions depends on the frames emphasized in elite debate, especially following a political controversy. In the aftermath of Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court made itself the object of political controversy because it effectively ended the 2000 presidential election. Opponents of the decision framed the Supreme Court ruling as partisan and “stealing the election,” while supporters framed it as a principled vote based on legal considerations. Using survey data, we examine how framing the controversy in these terms shaped the Court's public support. In so doing, we examine the distinction between specific support (e.g., confidence in officeholders) and diffuse support (e.g., institutional legitimacy). We find that framing the decision in terms of partisan decision making influences specific support, but it does not affect diffuse support. However, framing the justices' motives in terms of ending the election, a specific consequence of the decision, reduces diffuse s...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1111/1468-2508.00207

Framing Support for the Supreme Court in the Aftermath of Bush v. Gore

One manner in which Presidents attempt to have an enduring policy influence is through the appointment of like-minded justices to the Supreme Court. This article empirically examines Dahl's (1957) hypothesis that justices actually support the policy preferences of the Presidents who appoint them. We study concordance with new data for measuring presidential preferences in the domains of social and economic policy and by incorporating the notion of judicial change over time. We measure presidential preferences for the modern Presidents, Franklin Roosevelt through Bill Clinton, with a survey taken from a random sample of political science scholars who study the Presidency We measure the voting behavior of the President's Supreme Court appointees through their votes in civil liberties and economics cases from 1937 to 1994. Presidents appear to be reasonably successful in their appointments in the short run, but justices on average appear to deviate over time away from the Presidents who appointed them.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/449198.pdf

Buyer Beware? Presidential Success through Supreme Court Appointments

Is an Independent Judiciary Necessary for Democracy

J-PART is abstracted or indexed in Humanities Abstracts, Humanities Full Text, International Political Science Abstracts, OMNIFILE Full Text Mega Edition, PAIS International, Policy Currents, Political Science Abstracts, Sage Human Resources Abstracts, Sage Public Administration Abstracts, Sage Urban Studies Abstracts, Social Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Abstracts, Social Sciences Full Text, Social Planning/Policy and Development, Social Sciences Index, Sociological Abstracts, US Political Science Documents, Wilson Business Abstracts, Wilson Business Full Text, and Work Related Abstracts, and is available on microfilm from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3525783.pdf

With Friends Like These: Rule-Making Comment Submissions to the Securities and Exchange Commission

Many scholars of the Supreme Court and many justices assert the importance of the Federalist Papers. They provide important evidence of original meaning and interpretation of the Constitution, and there is evidence that there is an increase in citations to the Federalist Papers in Supreme Court opinions. While some may view this increased citation use as a positive development because it demonstrates reliance on legal authority in judicial decisions, we provide evidence that in a period marked by dissensus and controversy, the use of the Federalist Papers represents externally and internally oriented strategic attempts by the justices to add legitimacy to constitutional interpretation, and to sway colleagues. We use a combination of descriptive and multivariate techniques to examine Federalist citations from 1953 to 1995 to demonstrate our interpretation.

Robert M. Howard

Papers

Framing Support for the Supreme Court in the Aftermath of Bush v. Gore

Buyer Beware? Presidential Success through Supreme Court Appointments

Is an Independent Judiciary Necessary for Democracy

With Friends Like These: Rule-Making Comment Submissions to the Securities and Exchange Commission

The Supreme Court and Opinion Content: The Use of the Federalist Papers