Understanding Judicial Hierarchy: Reversals and the Behavior of Intermediate Appellate Judges

Abstract

One of the central controversies in the judicial behavior literature is the extent to which judges' ability to act according to their ideological preferences is affected by their location in the judicial hierarchy. Judges on intermediate appellate courts have different decisionmaking environments than high court judges. As a result, the goals of lower appellate court judges may differ from those of their superiors: the quest for legal accuracy may compete with the desire to pursue policy preferences. Analysis of the reversal rate of the U.S. circuit courts of appeals offers insight into the extent to which these judges balance the pressures of their own policy preferences with the desire to achieve the legally accurate result in cases they decide. Int eraction between first-level and second-level appellate courts is a subject that has garnered increasing attention over the past several years, but an opportunity to bridge disciplinary divides by integrating recent scholarly work by political scientists and legal academics has largely been missed in the process. Disagreements between the two levels of courts produce reversals of the lower court by the higher court, but the process that drives such reversal is not well-understood given its importance in maintenance of judicial organization. Particularly in systems where review by the second-level appellate court is discretionary, higher courts reverse lower courts in pursuit of making broader policy statements, so the process takes on added importance. Work that assesses decisions by high courts to grant leave important insight into how second-level courts select their cases. But the factors that determine courts' decisions to review each case may not offer a complete pic-

Strategy and the Decision to Dissent on the U.S. Courts of Appeals

“…Existing research indicates that, in cases with far-reaching policy implications, judges are more likely to dissent (Hettinger, Lindquist, and Martinek, 2003, 2006. Existing research indicates that, in cases with far-reaching policy implications, judges are more likely to dissent (Hettinger, Lindquist, and Martinek, 2003, 2006.…”

“…First, we posit that judges serving in circuits with relatively large workloads will be less likely to have the time to devote to writing dissenting opinions (Hettinger, Lindquist, and Martinek, 2003, 2006. In circuits where authoring dissenting opinions is relatively common, we believe judges will be more likely to dissent (Hettinger, Lindquist, and Martinek, 2003, 2006. In addition, circuit norms might influence the decision to dissent.…”

Lower Court Influence on U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Content

“…Moreover, past research demonstrates that a lower court's ideological compatibility with the Supreme Court plays a strong role in determining whether the Supreme Court will reverse or affirm the lower court (e.g., Scott 2006).…”

Commentary on “Picking Federal Judges: A Note on Policy and Partisan Selection Agendas”

“…al. 2007;Scott 2006) have opened the study of the courts in hierarchy to more rigorous empirical inquiry than previously possible. While our general approach to using the preference scores of selectors to estimate the preferences of judges has been widely accepted and adopted, the scores that we developed based on "Picking Federal Judges" have received some criticism, particularly for their use of the senator's common space scores to estimate judicial preferences when senatorial courtesy is operative.…”