Judicial opinion

About: Judicial opinion is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5300 publications have been published within this topic receiving 64803 citations.

The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior

Abstract: In "The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior, " prominent political scientists critically examine the contributions to the field of public law of the pioneering scholars of judicial behavior: C. Hermann Pritchett, Glendon Schubert, S. Sidney Ulmer, Harold J. Spaeth, Joseph Tanenhaus, Beverly Blair Cook, Walter F. Murphy, J. Woodward Howard, David J. Danelski, David Rohde, Edward S. Corwin, Alpheus Thomas Mason, Robert G. McCloskey, Robert A. Dahl, and Martin Shapiro.Unlike past studies that have traced the emergence and growth of the field of judicial studies, "The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior" accounts for the emergence and exploration of three current theoretical approaches to the study of judicial behavior--attitudinal, strategic, and historical-institutionalist--and shows how the research of these foundational scholars has contributed to contemporary debates about how to conceptualize judges as policy makers. Chapters utilize correspondence of and interviews with some early scholars, and provide a format to connect the concerns and controversies of the first political scientists of law and courts to contemporary challenges and methodological debates among today's judicial scholars. The volume's purpose in looking back is to look forward: to contribute to an ecumenical research agenda on judicial decision making, and, ultimately, to the generation of a unified, general theory of judicial behavior."The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior" will be of interest to graduate students in the law and courts field, political scientists interested in the philosophy of social science and the history of the discipline, legal practitioners and researchers, and political commentators interested in academic theorizing about public policy making.Nancy L. Maveety is Associate Professor of Political Science, Tulane University.

Criminal Sentences as Endogenous Taxes: Are They "Just" or "Efficient"?

Abstract: CRIME is a negative externality that arises out of the personal freedom afforded individuals in most societies. Society seeks to control crime through various means, mainly imprisonment. One can conceive of criminal sentences as Pigouvian taxes that are costly to administer.1 The literature on optimal harm-correcting taxes is usually normative. That is, the planner is assumed to be at liberty to choose taxes that maximize some objective function.2 In many circumstances, it may be preferable to think of taxes-in this case, criminal sentences-as endogenous variables, the outcomes of conscious political or judicial decision making. In the absence of perfectly functioning markets underlying political or judicial decisions, endogeneity may not beget optimality. For the case of criminal sentencing, Frank Easterbrook argues that the discretion exercised by prosecutors, judges, and parole authorities causes the crimi-

Oral Arguments and Decision Making on the United States Supreme Court

Abstract: Oral Arguments and Decision Making on the United States Supreme Court. By Timothy R. Johnson. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 180p. $35.00. This book makes a persuasive thesis that the oral arguments presented in cases before the United States Supreme Court are used by the justices to help them arrive at substantive legal and policy decisions that closely parallel their preferred outcomes. Although that would seem to be logical, the author documents that many scholars who write about the Court do not share this thesis. Those scholars, such as the so-called attitudinalists, posit that oral arguments have no effect on justices' votes. In order to reinforce his thesis, Timothy Johnson uses the strategic model of decision making, namely, that justices are goal oriented, they are strategic, and they account for institutional rules. He then goes on to explain that because the briefs presented to the Court from both the litigants and from amici curiae are understandably biased in behalf of their particular points of view, the oral arguments serve to solve this problem.

The Comparative Law and Economics of Judicial Councils

Abstract: In recent decades, many countries around the world have institutionalized judicial councils, institutions designed to enhance judicial independence and accountability. Our paper, the first comparative inquiry into this phenomenon, has two aims. First, we provide an economic theory of the formation of judicial councils and identify some of the dimensions along which they differ. Second, we discuss the national experience of several legal systems in light of our theory.

Executive Discretion, Judicial Decision Making, and Separation of Powers in the United States

Abstract: Existing work on the U.S. separation of powers typically views the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of constitutional and statutory disputes. By contrast, much comparative work explicitly recognizes the role of executives in enforcing and implementing court decisions. Drawing on that work, this study relaxes the assumption that executives must comply with Supreme Court rulings, and instead allows the propensity for executive compliance to depend upon indirect enforcement by the public. We develop a simple model of Supreme Court decision making in the presence of executive discretion over compliance and demonstrate that such discretion can restrict substantially the Court’s decision making. Using data collected for the Warren and Burger courts, we find evidence consistent with the argument that the Supreme Court’s ability to constrain exective descretion depends critically upon the public.