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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
The Distribution Of Justices' Votes And Countering National Disunity, Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos
The Distribution Of Justices' Votes And Countering National Disunity, Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos
FIU Law Review
The estimation of the distribution that matches the voting of the justices of the Supreme Court shows that voting is correlated and reveals three phenomena: an outlier distribution produced by one composition of the Court, the surprising frequency of unanimous decisions, and the intensity with which the Court avoids 4–4 decisions. The intensity with which the Court avoids 4–4 splits and the strength of the drive to produce unanimous decisions seem sensitive to national disunity. At times of greater disunity, 1965 to 1975 and 2001 to 2020, the Court avoids 4–4 splits more intensely and has a greater fraction of …
The Application Of Law As A Key To Understanding Judicial Independence, Tahirih V. Lee
The Application Of Law As A Key To Understanding Judicial Independence, Tahirih V. Lee
FIU Law Review
Judges across China recently declined to apply a law that the National People’s Congress had newly brought into effect. In this article, I describe this startling finding and explore the significance of it. I conclude that it represents an exercise of judicial independence. Using a thickly descriptive approach that focuses on textual analysis and institutional context, I demonstrate that judges in China have no legal duty to apply law and that it is professionally risky for them to apply law; that judges there operate within a professional culture that encourages restraint; and that the court system has developed a strong …