IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlstud/doi10.1086-669125.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Yonatan Lupu
  • James H. Fowler

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Yonatan Lupu & James H. Fowler, 2013. "Strategic Citations to Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(1), pages 151-186.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:doi:10.1086/669125
    DOI: 10.1086/669125
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/669125
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/669125
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/669125?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harnay, Sophie & Marciano, Alain, 2003. "Judicial conformity versus dissidence: an economic analysis of judicial precedent," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 405-420, December.
    2. Martin, Andrew D. & Quinn, Kevin M., 2002. "Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 134-153, April.
    3. Landes, William M & Posner, Richard A, 1976. "Legal Precedent: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(2), pages 249-307, August.
    4. Segal, Jeffrey A. & Cover, Albert D., 1989. "Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(2), pages 557-565, June.
    5. Scott E. Page, 2007. "Prologue to The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies," Introductory Chapters, in: The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies, Princeton University Press.
    6. Emerson H. Tiller, 2007. "Legal Doctrine and Political Control," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(2), pages 326-345, June.
    7. Bailey, Michael A. & Maltzman, Forrest, 2008. "Does Legal Doctrine Matter? Unpacking Law and Policy Preferences on the U.S. Supreme Court," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 102(3), pages 369-384, August.
    8. Michael A. Bailey & Brian Kamoie & Forrest Maltzman, 2005. "Signals from the Tenth Justice: The Political Role of the Solicitor General in Supreme Court Decision Making," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(1), pages 72-85, January.
    9. Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2007. "The Evolution of Common Law," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(1), pages 43-68.
    10. Bartels, Brandon L., 2009. "The Constraining Capacity of Legal Doctrine on the U.S. Supreme Court," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 103(3), pages 474-495, August.
    11. Charles M. Cameron, 2007. "Bargaining and Opinion Assignment on the US Supreme Court," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(2), pages 276-302, June.
    12. Lupu, Yonatan & Voeten, Erik, 2012. "Precedent in International Courts: A Network Analysis of Case Citations by the European Court of Human Rights," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(2), pages 413-439, April.
    13. Anderson Iv, Robert & Tahk, Alexander M., 2007. "Institutions and Equilibrium in the United States Supreme Court," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 101(4), pages 811-825, November.
    14. Stephen J. Choi & G. Mitu Gulati, 2008. "Bias in Judicial Citations: A Window into the Behavior of Judges?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(1), pages 87-129, January.
    15. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    16. Chris W. Bonneau & Thomas H. Hammond & Forrest Maltzman & Paul J. Wahlbeck, 2007. "Agenda Control, the Median Justice, and the Majority Opinion on the U.S. Supreme Court," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(4), pages 890-905, October.
    17. Tom S. Clark & Benjamin Lauderdale, 2010. "Locating Supreme Court Opinions in Doctrine Space," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(4), pages 871-890, October.
    18. Landes, William M & Lessig, Lawrence & Solimine, Michael E, 1998. "Judicial Influence: A Citation Analysis of Federal Courts of Appeals Judges," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(2), pages 271-332, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Monika Stachowiak-Kudła & Janusz Kudła, 2023. "Measuring the prestige of administrative courts," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 3637-3662, August.
    2. Kazutaka Takechi, 2023. "How are the precedents of trade policy rules made under the World Trade Organization?," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 806-821, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ryan C. Black & James F. Spriggs, 2013. "The Citation and Depreciation of U.S. Supreme Court Precedent," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 10(2), pages 325-358, June.
    2. Anthony Niblett, 2013. "Case-by-Case Adjudication and the Path of the Law," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(2), pages 303-330.
    3. Lerner, Joshua Y. & McCubbins, Mathew D. & Renberg, Kristen M., 2021. "The efficacy of measuring judicial ideal points: The mis-analogy of IRTs," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    4. Keren Weinshall‐Margel, 2011. "Attitudinal and Neo‐Institutional Models of Supreme Court Decision Making: An Empirical and Comparative Perspective from Israel," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(3), pages 556-586, September.
    5. John Szmer & Robert K. Christensen & Samuel Grubbs, 2020. "What influences the influence of U.S. Courts of Appeals decisions?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 49(1), pages 55-81, February.
    6. Rustam Romaniuc, 2012. "Judicial Dissent under Externalities and Incomplete Information," Czech Economic Review, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, vol. 6(3), pages 209-224, October.
    7. Spruk, Rok & Kovac, Mitja, 2019. "Replicating and extending Martin-Quinn scores," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    8. David Gliksberg, 2014. "Does the Law Matter? Win Rates and Law Reforms," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(2), pages 378-407, June.
    9. Monika Stachowiak-Kudła & Janusz Kudła, 2023. "Measuring the prestige of administrative courts," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 3637-3662, August.
    10. Justin Wedeking, 2010. "Supreme Court Litigants and Strategic Framing," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(3), pages 617-631, July.
    11. Christopher Brough & Li‐Yin Liu & Yao‐Yuan Yeh, 2024. "Judicial reasoning, individual cultural types, and support for COVID‐19 vaccine mandates," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 41(3), pages 448-470, May.
    12. Jacobi, Tonja & Kontorovich, Eugene, 2015. "Why judges always vote," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 190-199.
    13. Niblett, Anthony & Yoon, Albert H., 2015. "Judicial disharmony: A study of dissent," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 60-71.
    14. Ryan J. Owens, 2010. "The Separation of Powers and Supreme Court Agenda Setting," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(2), pages 412-427, April.
    15. 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.
    16. Berlemann, Michael & Christmann, Robin, 2017. "The Role of Precedents on Court Delay - Evidence from a civil law country," MPRA Paper 80057, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Clark, Tom S. & Montagnes, B. Pablo & Spenkuch, Jörg L., 2022. "Politics from the Bench? Ideology and Strategic Voting in the U.S. Supreme Court," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    18. 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.
    19. Vlad Tarko & Kyle O’Donnell, 2019. "Escape from Europe: a calculus of consent model of the origins of liberal institutions in the North American colonies," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 70-95, March.
    20. Brian C. Albrecht & Joshua R. Hendrickson & Alexander William Salter, 2022. "Evolution, uncertainty, and the asymptotic efficiency of policy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 192(1), pages 169-188, July.

    More about this item

    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:ucp:jlstud:doi:10.1086/669125. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS .

    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.