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Full-Text Articles in Law
Trading Votes For Reasoning: Covering In Judicial Opinions, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi
Trading Votes For Reasoning: Covering In Judicial Opinions, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Judging Measures, Mitu Gulati, David F. Levi
Judging Measures, Mitu Gulati, David F. Levi
Faculty Scholarship
The question of how to optimally design judicial institutions is one of central importance to the scholarship focused on courts. Basic questions such as whether there should be mandatory retirement for judges, whether judges should be expected to write their own opinions and whether greater racial or gender diversity on the courts improves decision making are optimal design questions. Given the vast variation in the types of judicial system designs used around the world (and even within the United States), it should be possible to conduct a comparative analysis of the relative efficacy of the different designs. These comparisons cannot …
Bias In Judicial Citations: A Window Into The Behavior Of Judges?, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi
Bias In Judicial Citations: A Window Into The Behavior Of Judges?, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi
Faculty Scholarship
This article tests for the presence of bias in judicial citations within federal circuit court opinions. Our findings suggest bias along three dimensions. First, judges base outside-circuit citation decisions in part on the political party of the cited judge. Judges tend to cite judges of the opposite political party less often than would be expected considering the fraction of the total pool of opinions attributable to judges of the opposite political party. Second, judges are more likely to engage in biased citation practices in certain high-stakes situations. These high-stakes situations include opinions dealing with certain subject matters (such as individual …
Which States Have The Best (And Worst) High Courts?, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi, Eric A. Posner
Which States Have The Best (And Worst) High Courts?, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi, Eric A. Posner
Faculty Scholarship
This paper ranks the high courts of the fifty states, based on their performance during the years 1998-2000, along three dimensions: opinion quality (or influence as measured by out-of-state citations), independence (or non-partisanship), and productivity (opinions written). We also discuss ways of aggregating these measures. California and Delaware had the most influential courts; Georgia and Mississippi had the most productive courts; and Rhode Island and New York had the most independent courts. If equal weight is given to each measure, then the top five states were: California, Arkansas, North Dakota, Montana, and Ohio. We compare our approach and results with …