Citation to Legislative History: Empirical Evidence on Positive Political and Contextual Theories of Judicial Decision Making

TLDR: In this article, the authors present empirical evidence suggesting that political context and judicial panel dynamics influence an authoring judge's use of legislative history, and that the authoring judges will cite legislative history by legislators who share political party affiliation with the colleagues and superiors of the author.

Abstract: We present empirical evidence suggesting that political context—judicial hierarchy and judicial panel dynamics—influences an authoring judge’s use of legislative history. Specifically, we find that to the extent that political ideology matters, a district court judge’s choice of legislative history is influenced, albeit modestly, by (1) the political makeup of the overseeing circuit court and (2) the political characteristics of a judge’s panel colleagues, as well as by the circuit court as a whole. These factors matter more than the authoring judge’s own political‐ideological connection to the legislators. Put differently, an authoring judge will have a greater tendency to cite legislative history by legislators who share political party affiliation with the colleagues and superiors of the authoring judge than legislators sharing the same political party affiliation as the authoring judge himself. These findings are consistent generally with positive political and contextual theories of judicial...

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GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works Faculty Scholarship
2009
Citation to Legislative History: Empirical Evidence on Positive Citation to Legislative History: Empirical Evidence on Positive
Political and Contextual Theories of Judicial Decision Making Political and Contextual Theories of Judicial Decision Making
Michael B. Abramowicz
George Washington University Law School
, abramowicz@law.gwu.edu
Emerson H. Tiller
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/faculty_publications
Part of the Law Commons
Recommended Citation Recommended Citation
Michael Abramowicz & Emerson H. Tiller, Citation to Legislative History: Empirical Evidence on Positive
Political and Contextual Theories of Judicial Decision Making, 38 J. LEGAL STUD. 419 (2009)
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