IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jleorg/v31y2015i4p808-842..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Interpreting Circuit Court Voting Patterns: A Social Interactions Framework

Author

Listed:
  • Joshua B. Fischman

Abstract

Many empirical studies have found that circuit judges’ votes are significantly influenced by their panel colleagues. Although this influence is typically measured in terms of colleagues’ characteristics, this article argues that it is better understood as an effect of colleagues’ votes. Applying the latter interpretation, this article reanalyzes 11 prior studies of panel voting, as well as three novel data sets, and reveals the impact of colleagues’ votes to be strikingly uniform. In almost every type of case, each colleague’s vote increases the likelihood that a judge will vote in the same direction by roughly 40 percentage points. This result is consistent with a strong norm of consensus and can account for nearly all of the perceived impact of colleagues’ party, gender, and race. This finding raises questions about strategic and deliberative models of panel voting and helps clarify measurement issues regarding the relationship between judicial characteristics and voting behavior (JEL C31, K40).

Suggested Citation

  • Joshua B. Fischman, 2015. "Interpreting Circuit Court Voting Patterns: A Social Interactions Framework," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 31(4), pages 808-842.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:31:y:2015:i:4:p:808-842.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ews042
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Keith Carlson & Michael A. Livermore & Daniel N. Rockmore, 2020. "The Problem of Data Bias in the Pool of Published U.S. Appellate Court Opinions," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(2), pages 224-261, June.
    2. Freyens, Benoit Pierre & Gong, Xiaodong, 2017. "Judicial decision making under changing legal standards: The case of dismissal arbitration," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 108-126.
    3. Robert S. Erikson, 2022. "Appellate court assignments as a natural experiment: Gender panel effects in sex discrimination cases," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(2), pages 423-446, June.
    4. Richard Holden & Michael Keane & Matthew Lilley, 2021. "Peer effects on the United States Supreme Court," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(3), pages 981-1019, July.
    5. Xiaohong Yu & Zhaoyang Sun, 2022. "The company they keep: When and why Chinese judges engage in collegiality," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(4), pages 936-1002, December.
    6. Freyens, Benoit Pierre & Gong, Xiaodong, 2020. "Judicial arbitration of unfair dismissal cases: The role of peer effects," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    7. Chen, Daniel L. & Cui, Xing & Shang, Lanyu & Zheng, Junchao, 2016. "What Matters: Agreement Between U.S. Courts of Appeals Judges," TSE Working Papers 16-747, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C31 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models; Quantile Regressions; Social Interaction Models
    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:31:y:2015:i:4:p:808-842.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jleo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.