Law Commons^™

The Middle Class, Urban Schools And Choice, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

The Value Of Precedent : Appellate Briefs And Judicial Opinions In The U.S. Courts Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Todd A. Collins, Susan B. Haire

Laura Moyer

This study of appellate advocacy examines factors that affect judicial treatment of precedents identified in litigant briefs. Although we find some attorney and party characteristics influence whether a court addresses precedent cited by a party, legal resources are not as influential in determining whether the court adopts a party’s use of a precedent. At times, ideological congruence between the circuit panel and the litigant can increase the likelihood that the court’s opinion will use a precedent in the same way as presented by the litigants. There is also some support for the importance of attorney experience. Even when their clients …

Judicial Innovation And Sexual Harassment Doctrine In The U.S. Court Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Holley Takersley

Laura Moyer

The determination that sexual harassment constituted “discrimination based on sex” under Title VII was first made by the lower federal courts, not Congress. Drawing from the literature on policy diffusion, this article examines the adoption of hostile work environment standards across the U.S. Courts of Appeals in the absence of controlling Supreme Court precedent. The results bolster recent findings about the influence of female judges on their male colleagues and suggest that in addition to siding with female plaintiffs, female judges also helped to shape legal rules that promoted gender equality in the workplace.

Competing Social Movements And Local Political Culture : Voting On Ballot Propositions To Ban Same-Sex Marriage., Arnold Fleischmann, Laura Moyer

Laura Moyer

Objective: This paper uses social movement theory to explain variation in local support for proposed constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage in 22 states during 2004 and 2006. Methods: The analysis uses OLS regression with county-level data to explain variation in local support for the amendments. Results: Support for the amendments in both years was positively related to the proportion of a county that was evangelical or Republican, but negatively related to its level of education and proportion of Catholics. Amendment support was positively related in only one year to the percentage of a county’s population that was professional, young, …

Gender, Race, And Intersectionality On The Federal Appellate Bench., Todd Collins, Laura Moyer

Laura Moyer

While theoretical justifications predict that a judge’s gender and race may influence judicial decisions, empirical support for these arguments has been mixed. However, recent increases in judicial diversity necessitate a reexamination of these earlier studies. Rather than examining individual judges on a single characteristic, such as gender or race alone, this research note argues that the intersection of individual characteristics may provide an alternative approach for evaluating the effects of diversity on the federal appellate bench. The results of cohort models examining the joint effects of race and gender suggest that minority female judges are more likely to support criminal …

Trailblazers And Those That Followed : Personal Experiences, Gender, And Judicial Empathy., Laura P. Moyer, Susan B. Haire

Laura Moyer

This paper investigates one causal mechanism that may explain why female judges on the federal appellate courts are more likely than men to side with plaintiffs in sex discrimination cases. To test whether personal experiences with inequality are related to empathetic responses to the claims of female plaintiffs, we focus on the first wave of female judges, who attended law school during a time of severe gender inequality. We find that female judges are more likely than their male colleagues to support plaintiffs in sex discrimination cases, but that this difference is seen only in judges who graduated law school …

Rethinking Critical Mass In The Federal Appellate Courts., Laura Moyer

Laura Moyer

This article draws from critical mass studies of gender in other political institutions to inform an application to the US Courts of Appeals. The results demonstrate the utility of considering court-level aspects of diversity. As mixed-sex panels become more common within a circuit, both male and female judges increasingly support plaintiffs in civil rights claims, though the magnitude of the effect is larger for women. The presence of a female chief judge is also positively associated with pro-plaintiff decisions by men and women in sex discrimination cases.

The Role Of Case Complexity In Judicial Decision Making., Laura P. Moyer

Laura Moyer

The literature on ideology and decision making offers conflicting expectations about how judges’ ideology should affect their votes in cases that raise many legal issues. Using cases from the U.S. Courts of Appeals, I examine the strength of ideology as a predictor of sincere voting in single and multi-issue cases and test whether the same effect for ideology can be seen for liberal and conservative judges. For all judges, ideology yields a larger effect as the number of issues increases; however, conservative judges are much more likely than liberal judges to cast sincere votes at all levels of complexity.

The Subterranean Counterrevolution: The Supreme Court, The Media, And Litigation Retrenchment, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Sean Farhang

This article is part of a larger project to study the counterrevolution against private enforcement of federal law from an institutional perspective. In a series of articles emerging from the project, we show how the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court (wielding both judicial power under Article III of the Constitution and delegated legislative power under the Rules Enabling Act) fared in efforts to reverse or dull the effects of statutory and other incentives for private enforcement. An institutional perspective helps to explain the outcome we document: the long-term erosion of the infrastructure of private enforcement as a result of …

Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Sean Farhang

The program of regulation through private litigation that Democratic Congresses purposefully created starting in the late 1960s soon met opposition emanating primarily from the Republican party. In the long campaign for retrenchment that began in the Reagan administration, consequential reform proved difficult and ultimately failed in Congress. Litigation reformers turned to the courts and, in marked contrast to their legislative failure, were well-rewarded, achieving growing rates of voting support from an increasingly conservative Supreme Court on issues curtailing private enforcement under individual statutes. We also demonstrate that the judiciary’s control of procedure has been central to the campaign to retrench …

Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Sean Farhang

In this article we situate consideration of class actions in a framework, and fortify it with data, that we have developed as part of a larger project, the goal of which is to assess the counterrevolution against private enforcement of federal law from an institutional perspective. In a series of articles emerging from the project, we have documented how the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court (wielding both judicial power under Article III of the Constitution and delegated legislative power under the Rules Enabling Act) fared in efforts to reverse or dull the effects of statutory and other incentives for …

The Role Of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools In The Renewal Of American Democracy, Bruce Ledewitz

Bruce Ledewitz

Incumbent Landscapes, Disruptive Uses: Perspectives On Marijuana-Related Land Use Control, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan