Politics and the Judiciary: The Influence of Judicial Background on Case Outcomes

Ashenfelter, Orley; Eisenberg, Theodore; Schwab, Stewart J.

doi:10.1086/467960

Cited by 203 publications

(102 citation statements)

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“…For instance, judges differ in sentencing, in the evidence that they allow at trial over a hearsay objection, and in whether they allow particular expert testimony. Earlier studies found that judge assignments do not affect trial rates (Ashenfelter, Eisenberg, and Schwab 1995;LaCasse and Payne 1999). However, these studies lack statistical power since they are based on only two or three districts and include a different dummy variable for each judge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

The Effect of Punishment Severity on Plea Bargaining

Boylan

2012

The Journal of Law and Economics

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This study examines whether criminal suspects facing more severe punishments are more likely to go to trial. Sample selection makes it difficult to obtain valid proxies for severity; for instance, I expect severity to be positively related to the prosecutor's decision to indict, to indict in federal court (versus state court), and to try the suspect. Theoretical and empirical findings indicate that in samples containing only indicted, convicted, or tried suspects, reasonable proxies for severity may be negatively related to actual severity. The assignment of defendants to judges randomizes the severity of punishment in a manner that is unrelated to sample selection. Thus, by examining the effect of these assignments, I find that a 10-month increase in prison sentences raises trial rates by 1 percentage point.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

The Effect of Punishment Severity on Plea Bargaining

Boylan

2012

The Journal of Law and Economics

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“…A number of papers look at random assignment of judges, including Abrams et. al (2012) who study racial differences in sentencing and Ashenfelter et. al (1995) who study the effect of judicial ideology in Federal courts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politics in the Courtroom: Political Ideology and Jury Decision Making

Anwar

Bayer

Hjalmarsson

2015

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This paper uses data from the Gothenburg District Court in Sweden and a research design that exploits the random assignment of politically appointed jurors (termed nämndemän) to make three contributions to the literature on jury decision-making: (i) an assessment of whether systematic biases exist in the Swedish nämndemän system, (ii) causal evidence on the impact of juror political party on verdicts, and (iii) an empirical examination of the role of peer effects in jury decision-making. The results reveal a number of systematic biases: convictions for young defendants and those with distinctly Arabic sounding names increase substantially when they are randomly assigned jurors from the far-right (nationalist) Swedish Democrat party, while convictions in cases with a female victim increase markedly when they are assigned jurors from the far-left (feminist) Vänster party. The results also indicate the presence of peer effects, with jurors from both the far-left and far-right parties drawing the votes of their more centrist peers towards their positions. Peer effects take the form of both sway effects, where jurors influence the opinions of their closest peers in a way that can impact trial outcomes, and dissent aversion, where jurors switch non-pivotal votes so that the decision is unanimous.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scholarship on district court judges has been less extensive, and its results less consistent. Some research finds that district court judges are influenced by ideological preferences, especially in sentencing and cases involving salient topics, but other research finds little or no correlation between ideological preferences and decisions (Rowland and Carp 1983;Rowland and Carp 1996;Ashenfelter, Eisenberg and Schwab 1995).The most plausible explanation for these different results is that district judges are more closely supervised than are judges higher up in the court hierarchy. Supreme Court justices do not face review and appellate court judges face review in only a tiny fraction of the cases they decide.…”

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confidence: 99%

What Do Federal District Judges Want? An Analysis of Publications, Citations, and Reversals

Choi

Gulati²,

Posner

2011

Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization

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We report evidence from a dataset of federal district judges from 2001 to 2002 that district judges adjust their opinion-writing practices to minimize their workload while maximizing their reputation and chance for elevation to a higher court. District judges in circuits with politically uniform circuit judges are better able to predict what opinions will get affirmed by the circuit court, leading to higher publication rates and a higher affirmance rate. In contrast, district judges in circuits with politically diverse circuit judges are less able to predict the preferences of the reviewing circuit court panel, leading district judges to publish fewer but higher quality opinions in an effort to maximize their affirmance rate. IntroductionA large literature has found that Supreme Court justices and federal appellate judges decide cases at least partly on the basis of ideological preferences. Scholarship on district court judges has been less extensive, and its results less consistent. Some research finds that district court judges are influenced by ideological preferences, especially in sentencing and cases involving salient topics, but other research finds little or no correlation between ideological preferences and decisions (Rowland and Carp 1983;Rowland and Carp 1996;Ashenfelter, Eisenberg and Schwab 1995).The most plausible explanation for these different results is that district judges are more closely supervised than are judges higher up in the court hierarchy. Supreme Court justices do not face review and appellate court judges face review in only a tiny fraction of the cases they decide. By contrast, district judges are routinely subject to appellate review. Reversal can be a burden for district judges, requiring them sometimes to conduct new trials and usually to hear new motions. At the same time, pressure is put on district judges to clear their dockets-to decide cases expeditiously. Reversal is also potentially embarrassing and detrimental to a trial judge's prospects for promotion to the appeals courts. Judges on the appeals courts, by contrast, have little prospect of promotion.We suspect that district judges care as much about political outcomes as appellate judges do, but cannot advance their ideological preferences because they are subject to appellate review.Thus, we hypothesize that district judges care about minimizing their workload and maximizing their reputation (and hopes for elevation to an appellate court) by avoiding appellate reversal.2 If 2 The literature on judging frequently mentions the aversion of judges to reversal (Higgins and Rubin 1980; Drahozal 1988;Watson 1988). Research on the appeals courts, however, has found little evidence of reversal aversion (Klein and Hume 2003;Cross 2007; Songer, Humpries and Sarver 2003). With respect to the district 4 district judges want to avoid reversal, and appellate judges decide cases on the basis of political preferences, then district judges will decide cases on the basis of the political preferences of appellate judges. When d...

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Politics and the Judiciary: The Influence of Judicial Background on Case Outcomes

Cited by 203 publications

References 0 publications

The Effect of Punishment Severity on Plea Bargaining

The Effect of Punishment Severity on Plea Bargaining

Politics in the Courtroom: Political Ideology and Jury Decision Making

What Do Federal District Judges Want? An Analysis of Publications, Citations, and Reversals

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