The Consistency of Judicial Choice

Abstract

Despite the fact that judicial scholars have developed reasonably well-specified models of the voting behavior of U.S. Supreme Court justices, little attention has been paid to influences on the consistency of the choices justices make. Aside from the methodological problems associated with failure to account for heteroskedasticity with regard to the justices' voting behavior, I argue that variance in judicial choice is also of theoretical import. Simply put, by uncovering influences on the stability of judicial choice, a more complete understanding of judicial decision making is provided. I explore this possibility by developing a theoretical framework that uncovers influences on the consistency of judicial choice which are then subjected to empirical validation. I show that the stability of judicial decision making is affected by attitudinal and strategic factors, as well as the Court's informational environment.

Executive Branch Socialization and Deference on the U.S. Supreme Court

“…Alternatively, in salient cases, the justices' decision‐making calculus may be more affected by input from judicial audiences—many of whom are likely to oppose the presidential position—who are presumably paying greater attention in these cases (Baum ). Either way, this finding fits the broader theory that salience reinforces ideological behavior (Unah and Hancock ) and decreases individual variability in judicial decision‐making (Collins Jr )—though it should be noted that the interaction terms of both ideology variables and the salience measures are not statistically significant.…”

Expertise, Experience, and Ideology on Specialized Courts: The Case of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

“…Specifically, much scholarly interest exists with regard to the factors that influence the ideological consistency of individual judges—i.e., that judges vote the way our theories predict that they should. Collins (2008) persuasively argues that consistency in judicial decisionmaking is affected by a variety of factors, including one's length of judicial service and ideological extremism. Of particular relevance to our present inquiry is his finding that ideologically consistent voting behavior is especially likely when judges view cases as salient (Collins 2008:868).…”

“…Collins (2008) persuasively argues that consistency in judicial decisionmaking is affected by a variety of factors, including one's length of judicial service and ideological extremism. Of particular relevance to our present inquiry is his finding that ideologically consistent voting behavior is especially likely when judges view cases as salient (Collins 2008:868). Cases are salient, then, when a judge or justice is interested in and cares deeply about the legal issue at hand (e.g., L. Epstein & Segal 2000).…”

The Role of Law Clerks in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Agenda-Setting Process

“…Turning to our justice tenure and complexity hypotheses, we capitalize on important recent developments in the study of acclimation effects (e.g., Collins, 2008;Kaheny, Haire, & Benesh, 2008) and measure Justice Tenure as the number of years that a justice had been on the bench before casting her agenda-setting vote. 8 Finally, we include Procedural Complexity, which we operationalize as the proportion of pages in a cert pool memo that were devoted to discussing the facts of the case and proceedings of the lower court(s).…”