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Full-Text Articles in Law
Judicial Response Or Litigant Strategy: Examining The Success Of The U.S. Solicitor General, Jeff L. Yates, Damon Cann, Brent Boyea
Judicial Response Or Litigant Strategy: Examining The Success Of The U.S. Solicitor General, Jeff L. Yates, Damon Cann, Brent Boyea
Jeff L Yates
In political science the well-known “Attitudinal Model” of legal decision making dictates that judges’ sincere policy preferences drive legal outcomes. In contrast, the celebrated “Selection Hypothesis” from the law and economics literature suggests that litigants carefully consider factors affecting potential case success (including judicial ideology) and accordingly choose to settle cases in which legal outcomes can be readily predicted in the name of efficiency. Thus, judges end up adjudicating a non-random set of cases which, in the typical situation, should not lend themselves to ideological decision making. From this perspective, the influence of Supreme Court justices’ ideological preferences on outcomes …
Race In The War On Drugs: The Social Consequences Of Presidential Rhetoric, Jeff L. Yates, Andrew Whitford
Race In The War On Drugs: The Social Consequences Of Presidential Rhetoric, Jeff L. Yates, Andrew Whitford
Jeff L Yates
One of the president’s main leadership tools for influencing the direction of American legal policy is public rhetoric. Numerous studies have examined the president’s use of the “bully pulpit” to lead policy by influencing Congress or public opinion, or by changing the behavior of public agencies. We argue that the president can use rhetoric to change the behavior of public agencies and that this can have important social consequences. We focus on the disproportionate impact of presidential rhetoric on different “target populations” in the context of the War on Drugs. Specifically, we observe that presidential rhetoric had a greater impact …
The Intersection Of Judicial Attitudes And Litigant Selection Theories: Explaining U.S. Supreme Court Decision Making, Jeff L. Yates, Elizabeth Coggins
The Intersection Of Judicial Attitudes And Litigant Selection Theories: Explaining U.S. Supreme Court Decision Making, Jeff L. Yates, Elizabeth Coggins
Jeff L Yates
Two prominent theories of legal decision making provide seemingly contradictory explanations for judicial outcomes. In political science, the Attitudinal Model suggests that judicial outcomes are driven by judges' sincere policy preferences -- judges bring their ideological inclinations to the decision making process and their case outcome choices largely reflect these policy preferences. In contrast, in the law and economics literature, Priest and Klein's well-known Selection Hypothesis posits that court outcomes are largely driven by the litigants' strategic choices in the selection of cases for formal dispute or adjudication -- forward thinking litigants settle cases where potential judicial outcomes are readily …
Agenda Setting, Issue Priorities, And Organizational Maintenance: The U.S. Supreme Court, 1955 To 1994, Jeff L. Yates, Andrew B. Whitford, William Gillespie
Agenda Setting, Issue Priorities, And Organizational Maintenance: The U.S. Supreme Court, 1955 To 1994, Jeff L. Yates, Andrew B. Whitford, William Gillespie
Jeff L Yates
In this study, we examine agenda setting by the U.S. Supreme Court, and ask the question of why the Court allocates more or less of its valuable agenda space to one policy issue over others. Our study environment is the policy issue composition of the Court's docket: the Court's attention to criminal justice policy issues relative to other issues. We model the Court's allocation of this agenda space as a function of internal organizational demands and external political signals. We find that this agenda responds to the issue priorities of the other branches of the federal government and the public. …