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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race

Twenty-First Century Split: Partisan, Racial, And Gender Differences In Circuit Judges Following Earlier Opinions, Stuart Minor Benjamin, Kevin M. Quinn, Byungkoo Kim Jan 2023

Twenty-First Century Split: Partisan, Racial, And Gender Differences In Circuit Judges Following Earlier Opinions, Stuart Minor Benjamin, Kevin M. Quinn, Byungkoo Kim

Faculty Scholarship

Judges shape the law with their votes and the reasoning in their opinions. An important element of the latter is which opinions they follow, and thus elevate, and which they cast doubt on, and thus diminish. Using a unique and comprehensive dataset containing the substantive Shepard’s treatments of all circuit court published and unpublished majority opinions issued between 1974 and 2017, we examine the relationship between judges’ substantive treatments of earlier appellate cases and their party, race, and gender. Are judges more likely to follow opinions written by colleagues of the same party, race, or gender? What we find is …


Judicial Intervention As Judicial Restraint, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis E. Fuentes-Rohwer Jan 2018

Judicial Intervention As Judicial Restraint, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis E. Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the Court's decision in Gil v. Whitford. It advances two claims. First, it provides a comprehensive account of the Court's skepticism of judicial supervision of democratic politics, an account that we call the narrative of nonintervention. It situates Gill within that account and argues that the Court's reluctance to intervene is a function of the Court's institutional calculus that it ought to protect its legitimacy and institutional capital when it engages in what look like political fights. Second, the paper provides an instrumentalist account for judicial intervention. It argues that the Court should intervene to prevent partisan …


Reynolds Reconsidered, Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer Jan 2015

Reynolds Reconsidered, Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.