Judicial opinion

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

Strategic Citations to Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court

Abstract: Common law evolves not only through the outcomes of cases but also through the reasoning and citations to precedent employed in judicial opinions. We focus on citations to precedent by the U.S. Supreme Court. We demonstrate how strategic interaction between justices during the Court’s bargaining process affects citations to precedent in the Court’s opinion. We find that the majority-opinion writer relies more heavily on precedent when the Court’s decision is accompanied by separate opinions. We also show that diversity of opinion on the Court, a factor often overlooked, has a significant relationship with citations to precedent. Finally, our results indicate that the ideology of the median justice influences citation practices more than ideology of the majority-opinion writer.

Hard Judicial Choices: Federal District Court Judges and State and Local Officials

Abstract: In controversial court cases involving civil rights, schools and housing, prison reform, and other social issues, federal district-court judges are often called upon to make some of the most difficult judicial decisions. Asked to protect the constitutional rights of all individuals, even when such protection may be at odds with the interests of local majorities, federal district-court judges are frequently faced with pressure, ridicule, and even threats to themselves or their families when deciding and implementing complex remedial decrees. Why do judges issue these decrees given the difficulties involved? How do these cases arise? How are they prosecuted and remedies fashioned when federally protected rights are violated? How can relations between federal judges and state and local officials be improved? This book, the first to attempt to view these cases from the perspective of district-court judges, examines some of these questions through five comparative case studies involving housing discrimination, school desegregation, mental health facilities, and the right to treatment, prison conditions, and policy/community relations. An introductory chapter presents a clear overview of the remedial decree process. Each of the following case studies is preceded by a chapter that sets the case in its legal, administrative, and political context.

Sentencing Rationales and Judicial Decision Making at the International Criminal Tribunals

Abstract: Objective. I develop a theory of judicial decision making at the international tribunals regarding the punishment of those who have committed violations of international law. Previous research has found and criticized inconsistent sentencing at the tribunals, but I argue that we can explain such sentences through a theoretical framework that outlines how judges utilize the traditional punishment rationales of retribution and deterrence. Methods. Regression analysis is conducted using original data on the sentences passed on 132 individuals from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). Results. I find significant support for the importance of each of the sentencing rationales. Conclusions. Tribunal judges sentence in a consistent manner premised on domestic and international rationales.

Rethinking the interest-convergence thesis

Abstract: INTRODUCTION When the United States Supreme Court validated the limited use of race as an admissions criterion in Grutter v. Bollinger eight years ago,1 many veterans of the civil rights struggle greeted the decision with elation. Elaine R. Jones, then-President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., called the decision upholding the University of Michigan's law school admissions program "a slam-dunk victory affirming the principles we have been fighting for."2 Professor Jack Greenberg, one of Jones's predecessors at the Legal Defense Fund and part of the litigation team who won Brown v. Board of Education,3 also viewed Grutter as an affirmation of the organization's efforts to achieve black advancement.4 Professor Greenberg expressed particular admiration for Grutter's conception of affirmative action not as a policy that benefits primarily blacks but instead as a policy that benefits all of American society-including the armed services and the business communities.5 Referring to Justice O'Connor's opinion for the Court in Grutter, Professor Greenberg commented that she kept "[h]er eye . . . on the condition of society and what affirmative action can do to help fix it, not what caused the condition."6 This holistic perspective was, in Professor Greenberg's estimation, deeply commendable.7 "In this I think she is not only right," Professor Greenberg wrote, "but it is what has been the driving force of affirmative action all the time: affirmative action to make ours a better country."8 Grutter was not, of course, praised in all circles. In addition to criticism launched at the opinion from the right for its refusal to prohibit racial classifications,9 legal scholars on the left also criticized Grutter for precisely the feature that Professor Greenberg lauded: its justification of affirmative action as a compelling government interest on the ground that such programs enhance leading American institutions rather than on the ground that such programs benefit racial minorities. Most prominently, Professor Derrick Bell viewed Grutter as a "definitive example" of his "interest-convergence" thesis.10 According to this thesis, blacks receive favorable judicial decisions to the extent that their interests coincide with the interests of whites.11 The Court's decision in Brown, by these lights, was not motivated by a desire to redress black suffering under racial segregation; instead, the United States eliminated Jim Crow in order to improve its international image during the Cold War.12 Writing nearly five decades after Brown was decided, Professor Bell detected similar motivations animating the Court's decision in Grutter: "When [Justice O'Connor] perceived in the Michigan Law School's admissions program an affirmative action plan that minimizes the importance of race while offering maximum protection to whites and those aspects of society with which she identifies, she supported it."13 Professor Bell contended that Grutter "should provide [him] with some measure of a prophet's pride" because he has long asserted "that no matter how much harm blacks were suffering because of racial hostility and discrimination, we could not obtain meaningful relief until policymakers perceived that the relief blacks sought furthered interests or resolved issues of more primary concern."14 Just as Brown did not immediately lead to desegregated schools in much of the country,15 Professor Bell predicted that Grutter would prove to be a fleeting victory for racial minorities: "Once again, blacks and Hispanics are the fortuitous beneficiaries of a ruling that can and probably will change when other priorities assert themselves."16 Professor Bell was far from alone in viewing Grutter as evidence of the interest-convergence theory at work. Indeed, a strikingly large number of scholars independently identified the Court's decision as a vivid illustration of racial interests converging.17 Grutter thus provides a clear view of the central position that the interest-convergence theory occupies in constitutional law scholarship in general and race relations law in particular. …