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Personal Attribute Models of the Voting Behavior of U.S. Supreme Court Justices: Liberalism in Civil Liberties and Economics Decisions, 1946–1978

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  • Tate, C. Neal

Abstract

The prevailing view among students of judicial politics is that judges' background characteristics or personal attributes cannot provide satisfactory explanations for variation in their decision-making behavior. Parsimonious attribute models reported here account for 70 to 90 percent of the variance in the voting of postwar Supreme Court justices in split decisions concerning civil rights and liberties, and economics. Seven variables representing six meaningful and easily interpretable concepts achieve this success. The concepts are Judge's Party Identification, Appointing President, Prestige of Prelaw Education (economics only), Appointed from Elective Office, Appointment Region (civil liberties only), Extensiveness of Judicial Experience, and Type of Prosecutorial Experience. The impressive performance of these models is attributed to superior measurement, operationalization, and model building; to a greater similarity between personal attribute models and more fully specified ones than has been assumed; and to the possibility that the attitudes which intervene between the personal attributes and the voting of judges are causally very closely linked to voting.

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  • Tate, C. Neal, 1981. "Personal Attribute Models of the Voting Behavior of U.S. Supreme Court Justices: Liberalism in Civil Liberties and Economics Decisions, 1946–1978," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 75(2), pages 355-367, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:75:y:1981:i:02:p:355-367_17
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    1. Hossain, Ashrafee & Rjiba, Hatem & Saadi, Samir, 2022. "Judge Ideology and Corporate Sexual Orientation Equality," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    2. Doron Teichman & Eyal Zamir & Ilana Ritov, 2023. "Biases in legal decision‐making: Comparing prosecutors, defense attorneys, law students, and laypersons," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(4), pages 852-894, December.
    3. Denise M. Keele & Robert W. Malmsheimer & Donald W. Floyd & Lianjun Zhang, 2009. "An Analysis of Ideological Effects in Published Versus Unpublished Judicial Opinions," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(1), pages 213-239, March.
    4. Toma, Eugenia F., 1996. "A contractual model of the voting behavior of the supreme court: The role of the chief justice," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 433-447, December.
    5. Paresh Kumar Narayan & Russell Smyth, 2007. "What Explains Dissent on the High Court of Australia? An Empirical Assessment Using a Cointegration and Error Correction Approach," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 4(2), pages 401-425, July.
    6. Matthew Hall, 2010. "Randomness Reconsidered: Modeling Random Judicial Assignment in the U.S. Courts of Appeals," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 7(3), pages 574-589, September.
    7. Paul H. Edelman & David E. Klein & Stefanie A. Lindquist, 2012. "Consensus, Disorder, and Ideology on the Supreme Court," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 9(1), pages 129-148, March.
    8. Paul Jesilow & Julianne Ohlander, 2010. "The Impact of Tort Reforms on the Sanctioning of Physicians by State Licensing Boards," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 7(1), pages 117-140, March.
    9. Benjamin H. Barton & Emily Moran, 2013. "Measuring Diversity on the Supreme Court with Biodiversity Statistics," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 10(1), pages 1-34, March.
    10. Elizabeth L. Ogburn & Ilya Shpitser & Youjin Lee, 2020. "Causal inference, social networks and chain graphs," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 183(4), pages 1659-1676, October.
    11. Castro, Alexandre Samy de, 2021. "Judicial attitudes under shifting jurisprudence: Evidence from Brazil’s new drug law of 2006," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    12. Allen Huang & Kai Wai Hui & Reeyarn Zhiyang Li, 2019. "Federal Judge Ideology: A New Measure of Ex Ante Litigation Risk," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(2), pages 431-489, May.

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