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Duke Law Journal

2009

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Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Law

How The Dissent Becomes The Majority: Using Federalism To Transform Coalitions In The U.S. Supreme Court, Vanessa Baird, Tonja Jacobi Nov 2009

How The Dissent Becomes The Majority: Using Federalism To Transform Coalitions In The U.S. Supreme Court, Vanessa Baird, Tonja Jacobi

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.


The “Hidden Judiciary”: An Empirical Examination Of Executive Branch Justice, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich Apr 2009

The “Hidden Judiciary”: An Empirical Examination Of Executive Branch Justice, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Duke Law Journal

Administrative law judges attract little scholarly attention, yet they decide a large fraction of all civil disputes. In this Article, we demonstrate that these executive branch judges, like their counterparts in the judicial branch, tend to make predominantly intuitive rather than predominantly deliberative decisions. This finding sheds new light on executive branch justice by suggesting that judicial intuition, not judicial independence, is the most significant challenge facing these important judicial officers.


Are Empiricists Asking The Right Questions About Judicial Decisionmaking?, Jack Knight Apr 2009

Are Empiricists Asking The Right Questions About Judicial Decisionmaking?, Jack Knight

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Predicting Court Outcomes Through Political Preferences: The Japanese Supreme Court And The Chaos Of 1993, J. Mark Ramseyer Apr 2009

Predicting Court Outcomes Through Political Preferences: The Japanese Supreme Court And The Chaos Of 1993, J. Mark Ramseyer

Duke Law Journal

Empiricists routinely explain politically sensitive decisions of the U.S. federal courts through the party of the executive or legislature appointing the judge. That they can do so reflects the fundamental independence of the courts. After all, appointment politics will predict judicial outcomes only when judges are independent of sitting politicians. Because Japanese Supreme Court justices enjoy an independence similar to that of U.S. federal judges, I use judicial outcomes to ask whether Japanese premiers from different parties have appointed justices with different political preferences. Although the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) governed Japan for most of the postwar period, it temporarily …


Are Appointed Judges Strategic Too?, Joanna M. Shepherd Apr 2009

Are Appointed Judges Strategic Too?, Joanna M. Shepherd

Duke Law Journal

The conventional wisdom among many legal scholars is that judicial independence can best be achieved with an appointive judiciary; judicial elections turn judges into politicians, threatening judicial autonomy. Yet the original supporters of judicial elections successfully eliminated the appointive systems of many states by arguing that judges who owed their jobs to politicians could never be truly independent. Because the judiciary could function as a check and balance on the other governmental branches only if it truly were independent of them, the reformers reasoned that only popular elections could ensure a truly independent judiciary. Using a data set of virtually …