Judicial opinion

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

Judging adaptive management practices of U.S. agencies

Abstract: All U.S. federal agencies administering environmental laws purport to practice adaptive management (AM), but little is known about how they actually implement this conservation tool. A gap between the theory and practice of AM is revealed in judicial decisions reviewing agency adaptive management plans. We analyzed all U.S. federal court opinions published through 1 January 2015 to identify the agency AM practices courts found most deficient. The shortcomings included lack of clear objectives and processes, monitoring thresholds, and defined actions triggered by thresholds. This trio of agency shortcuts around critical, iterative steps characterizes what we call AM-lite. Passive AM differs from active AM in its relative lack of management interventions through experimental strategies. In contrast, AM-lite is a distinctive form of passive AM that fails to provide for the iterative steps necessary to learn from management. Courts have developed a sophisticated understanding of AM and often offer instructive rather than merely critical opinions. The role of the judiciary is limited by agency discretion under U.S. administrative law. But courts have overturned some agency AM-lite practices and insisted on more rigorous analyses to ensure that the promised benefits of structured learning and fine-tuned management have a reasonable likelihood of occurring. Nonetheless, there remains a mismatch in U.S. administrative law between the flexibility demanded by adaptive management and the legal objectives of transparency, public participation, and finality.

How Long is the Coastline of the Law? Thoughts on the Fractal Nature of Legal Systems

Abstract: Although citation to precedent in judicial opinions is a critical component of the network of rules that comprise “the law” in any area, there have been surprisingly few systematic attempts to use the abundant data available on citation patterns to uncover general principles about the structure of the legal system. We examine data on the number of times judicial opinions cite to, and are subsequently cited as, precedent to test the hypothesis that legal arguments and legal doctrine have a kind of “fractal” structure. Our model provides a reasonable fit to the citation data that we examined. There do appear, however, to be significant sources of variability in the data that are not explained by our simple predictive framework, and it is clearly far too early to draw any robust conclusions about the hypothesis other than that additional work along these lines appears to be warranted.

Political Bias in Court? Lay Judges and Asylum Appeals

Abstract: Several countries practice a system where laymen, who lack legal education, participate in the judicial decision making. Yet, little is known about their potential influence on the court rulings. I ...

Bloc Voting and The Freshman Justice Revisited

Abstract: A NEWLY APPOINTED JUSTICE often comes to the United States Supreme Court with the opportunity to have an immediate impact on decisions involving some of the significant policy questions of the day. Such an opportunity to influence policy is more meaningful when the "freshman justice" joins a closely divided court on which a single vote may tip the balance on a decision, or when a single president has the opportunity to appoint several like-minded justices in a single term. Recognizing the importance of the appointment process as a means of influencing judicial decisions, presidents throughout history have sought to name individuals who would support the president's policy goals once on the Court. 1 Thus, the question of how a newly appointed justice is likely to vote is of interest not only to the president, but to all who recognize the Supreme Court's policy-making function. Of particular interest is the question of whether the voting behavior of new justices differs from that of more senior members of the Court. Is the voting behavior of newcomers immediately

The Law Is a Good Thing (Psychology Is, Too) Human Rights in Psychological Jurisprudence*

Abstract: Psycholegal studies have been hampered by the lack of a theory to guide the choice of topics for research. Both judicial decision making and psychological research would be enhanced by emphasis on subjective experience in determining the scope of fundamental rights and fostering a legal system consonant with human dignity and responsive to social reality. International human rights law is presented as an example of the feasibility and utility of psychological jurisprudence.