IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/chu/wpaper/17-23.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Younger Federal District Court Judges Favor Presidential Power

Author

Listed:
  • Tom Campbell

    (Fowler School of Law, Chapman University)

  • Nathaniel T. Wilcox

    (Economics Science Institute, Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University)

Abstract

From 1960 to 2015, Federal District Court opinions involving challenges to Executive Branch authority show that U.S. Federal District Court judges (trial judges) support such authority less as they age, with a sharp decline beginning near age 57. We argue that District judges know that elevation to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals becomes increasingly improbable, and hence have less reason to ‘cooperate’ with the Executive, with advancing age. Political variables (and other variables) introduced as extra regressors do not reverse our main results. When there are contemporaneous vacancies on their Circuit courts, District judges in the eleven State Circuits (but not the District of Columbia circuit) are also more likely to favor the Executive.

Suggested Citation

  • Tom Campbell & Nathaniel T. Wilcox, 2017. "Younger Federal District Court Judges Favor Presidential Power," Working Papers 17-23, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
  • Handle: RePEc:chu:wpaper:17-23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.chapman.edu/research/institutes-and-centers/economic-science-institute/_files/WorkingPapers/campbell-and-wilcox-2017.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Elisha Carol Savchak & Thomas G. Hansford & Donald R. Songer & Kenneth L. Manning & Robert A. Carp, 2006. "Taking It to the Next Level: The Elevation of District Court Judges to the U.S. Courts of Appeals," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(2), pages 478-493, April.
    2. Cohen, Mark A, 1991. "Explaining Judicial Behavior or What's "Unconstitutional" about the Sentencing Commission?," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(1), pages 183-199, Spring.
    3. Cohen, Mark A., 1992. "The motives of judges: Empirical evidence from antitrust sentencing," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 13-30, March.
    4. Estrella, Arturo, 2003. "Critical Values And P Values Of Bessel Process Distributions: Computation And Application To Structural Break Tests," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(6), pages 1128-1143, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Martin Schneider, 2002. "Judicial Lawmaking in a Civil Law System: Evidence from German Labor Courts of Appeal," IAAEG Discussion Papers until 2011 200202, Institute of Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU).
    2. Scott S. Boddery, 2019. "Signals from a politicized bar: the solicitor general as a direct litigant before the U.S. Supreme Court," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 194-210, June.
    3. Pushkar Maitra & Russell Smyth, 2004. "Judicial Independence, Judicial Promotion and the Enforcement of Legislative Wealth Transfers—An Empirical Study of the New Zealand High Court," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 209-235, March.
    4. Miceli, Thomas J., 2010. "Legal change and the social value of lawsuits," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 203-208, September.
    5. Chen, Sanpan & Cui, Guowei & Zhang, Jianhua, 2017. "On testing for structural break of coefficients in factor-augmented regression models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 141-145.
    6. Richard T. Boylan, 2012. "The Effect of Punishment Severity on Plea Bargaining," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(3), pages 565-591.
    7. Virginia Rosales-López, 2008. "Economics of court performance: an empirical analysis," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 231-251, June.
    8. Charles-Elie Rabier & Jean-Marc Azaïs & Jean-Michel Elsen & Céline Delmas, 2019. "Chi-square processes for gene mapping in a population with family structure," Statistical Papers, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 239-271, February.
    9. J. Mark Ramseyer & Eric B. Rasmusen, 1996. "Judicial Independence in Civil Law Regimes: Econometrics from Japan," Public Economics 9603001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Fabio Padovano & Grazia Sgarra & Nadia Fiorino, 2003. "Judicial Branch, Checks and Balances and Political Accountability," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 47-70, March.
    11. Martin Schneider, 2005. "Judicial Career Incentives and Court Performance: An Empirical Study of the German Labour Courts of Appeal," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 127-144, September.
    12. Moral, Alfonso & Rosales, Virginia & Martín-Román, Ángel, 2021. "Professional vs. non-professional labour judges: their impact on the quality of judicial decisions," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    13. Paruolo, Paolo, 2006. "Common trends and cycles in I(2) VAR systems," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 143-168, May.
    14. 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.
    15. Christis Katsouris, 2023. "Predictability Tests Robust against Parameter Instability," Papers 2307.15151, arXiv.org.
    16. Christiansen, Charlotte & Eriksen, Jonas Nygaard & Møller, Stig Vinther, 2014. "Forecasting US recessions: The role of sentiment," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 459-468.
    17. Kim, Dukpa & Perron, Pierre, 2009. "Assessing the relative power of structural break tests using a framework based on the approximate Bahadur slope," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 149(1), pages 26-51, April.
    18. Alessandro Melcarne, 2017. "Careerism and judicial behavior," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 241-264, October.
    19. Gonzalo, Jesus & Pitarakis, Jean-Yves, 2010. "Regime specific predictability in predictive regressions," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 0916, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    20. Guimaraesy, Bernardo & Meyerhof Salama, Bruno, 2017. "Contingent judicial deference: theory and application to usury laws," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86146, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Judicial Behavior;

    JEL classification:

    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:chu:wpaper:17-23. 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: Megan Luetje (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esichus.html .

    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.