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Decision making

Vanderbilt University Law School

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Full-Text Articles in Law

"The Threes": Re-Imagining Supreme Court Decisionmaking, Chris Guthrie, Tracey E. George Jan 2008

"The Threes": Re-Imagining Supreme Court Decisionmaking, Chris Guthrie, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this Essay--the first in a series of essays designed to reimagine the Supreme Court--we argue that Congress should authorize the Court to adopt, in whole or part, panel decision making... With respect to the prospect of different Court outcomes, we demonstrate empirically in this Essay that the vast majority of cases decided during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries--including "Grutter", "Roe", and "Bush v. Gore" --would have come out the same way if the Court had decided them in panels rather than as a full Court.


Developing A Positive Theory Of Decisionmaking On U.S. Courts Of Appeals, Tracey E. George Jan 1998

Developing A Positive Theory Of Decisionmaking On U.S. Courts Of Appeals, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

As the decisions of the United States Courts of Appeals become an increasingly important part of American legal discourse, the debate concerning adjudication theories of the circuit courts gain particular relevance. Whereas, to date, the issue has received mostly normative treatment, this Article proceeds systematically and confronts the positive inquiry: how do courts of appeals judges actually decide cases? The Article proposes theoretically, tests empirically, and considers the implications of, a combined attitudinal and strategic model of en banc court of appeals decision making. The results challenge the classicist judges, legal scholars, and practitioners' normative frameworks, and suggest positive theory's …


Justice On The Tennessee Frontier: The Williamson County Circuit Court 1810-1820, Cornelia A. Clark Jan 1979

Justice On The Tennessee Frontier: The Williamson County Circuit Court 1810-1820, Cornelia A. Clark

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note examines the history of one early nineteenth-century circuit court and the caliber of its bench and bar. To analyze the workings of that court, this Note applies the analytical framework adopted by Friedman, Blume, and other historians to the raw data provided by a study of the Williamson County Circuit Court records. In each of several substantive areas for which the court's records provide information, the Note first considers Friedman's generalizations about nineteenth-century law and then interprets the Williamson County data in the light of those generalizations and the results of other case studies. This Note proceeds on …