We address fundamental questions about the ability of interest groups to shape public policy by examining the influence of amicus curiae briefs on U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion content. We argue that the justices will incorporate language from amicus briefs into their opinions based on the extent to which the amicus briefs contribute to their ability to make effective law and policy. Using plagiarism detection software and other forms of computer assisted content analysis, we find that the justices adopt language from amicus briefs based primarily on the quality of the brief's argument, the level of repetition in the brief, the ideological position advocated in the brief, and the identity of the amicus. These results add fresh insight into how interest groups influence the development of federal law by the Supreme Court.
Civil war outcome studies have used expected utility logic to identify factors that affect actors' estimates of the probability of victory, the payoffs from victory vs defeat, and the accumulated costs of fighting until victory is achieved. Tests have used static measures of national attributes and war characteristics, measured prior to the war or at its end. We use UCDP Georeferenced Event Data from 73 civil conflicts in Africa to estimate how changes in government and rebel tactical choices on where and when to fight battles affect expected utility estimates and, therefore, civil war outcomes.Previous studies on the outcome of civil wars (i.e. whether they end in government victory, rebel victory, or negotiated settlement) have employed expected utility logic to identify a set of factors that should affect the choice by governments and rebels between continuing to prosecute the war or quitting, either by conceding defeat or seeking a negotiated settlement. This choice, iterated throughout the course of the conflict, is based on each party's subjective estimates of (1) the probability of victory, (2) the payoffs from victory vs defeat, and (3) the accumulated costs of fighting from the beginning of the war through the present until that time in the future when the actor anticipates s/he will be able to achieve victory. Tests based on this logic, however, have employed as predictors of civil war outcomes static
The University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries conducted a study on the value of the UNT Digital Library, including its UNT Scholarly Works institutional repository, to investigate the value of the UNT Libraries' digital repositories as perceived by UNT faculty, staff, and graduate students. This evaluation of the impact of the UNT Libraries'interventions begins a longitudinal view of the overall impact of these digital repositories in order to inform decisions and provide baseline measurements against which future assessment results can be compared. Findings include that an increase in awareness of the UNT Libraries' digital repositories is statistically associated with a greater likelihood of multiple types of use and contributions back to digital repositories. Also, graduate students are, as a whole, more likely to be aware of and use the UNT Libraries' digital repositories than faculty or staff.
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