Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Procedural Postures: The Influence Of Legal Change On Strategic Litigants And Judges, Morgan Willey Hazelton

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

A wealth of scholarship indicates that rational individuals should modify their actions to maximize benefits as conditions change. Participants in litigation are faced with a multitude of opportunities to make decisions regarding if and how they will engage the legal system. Despite this fact, the potential for strategic behavior by litigants is often ignored by researchers due to difficulties in capturing such activity. To the extent that existing studies have focused on outcomes to the exclusion of litigant behavior, they have potentially produced biased results in considering the impact of changes in law, such as Supreme Court decisions. Thus, in …