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Strategic Judicial Lawmaking: An Empirical Investigation Of Ideology And Publication On The U.S. Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit, David S. Law Sep 2004

Strategic Judicial Lawmaking: An Empirical Investigation Of Ideology And Publication On The U.S. Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit, David S. Law

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

Previous studies have demonstrated that, in a number of contexts, federal appeals court judges divide along ideological lines when deciding cases upon the merits. To date, however, researchers have failed to find evidence that circuit judges take advantage of selective publication rules to further their ideological preferences - for example, by voting more ideologically in published cases that have precedential effect than in unpublished cases that lack binding effect upon future panels. This article evaluates the possibility that judges engage in strategic judicial lawmaking by voting more ideologically in published cases than in unpublished cases. To test this hypothesis, all …


Why Professor Redish Is Wrong About Abstention, Michael Wells Jul 1985

Why Professor Redish Is Wrong About Abstention, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

Most critics of the Supreme Court's abstention doctrines have attacked the substantive merits of rules that channel constitutional litigation away from federal courts and into state courts instead. In a recent article, Martin Redish raises an interesting objection to abstention from a different perspective. He addresses the institutional legitimacy of the rules and contends that whatever their merits, rules like these should be made only by Congress and not the Supreme Court, for they contravene Congress' intent to grant federal courts jurisdiction over constitutional claims against state actors. Part I of this article describes the context in which the choice …