among branches of government, 2 and within a judicial hierarchy 3 shape judicial decision-making. But studies of federal district judges-the nearly one thousand judges who compose 78% of the federal judiciary 4 and superintend 79% of its cases 5-have not matched this sophistication. Instead, much of the existing empirical work on federal district courts has failed to take account of the institutional setting in which those judges operate. Too often, studies of the district courts rely on an implicit assumption that judging at the trial court level is fundamentally the Supreme Court Justices engage in strategic voting in certiorari decisions); Forrest Maltzman &
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