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This article proposes a new cross-national thesis for judicial decision making. The judicial politicization theory posits that judges on highly politicized high courts will be more likely to decide cases using ideological and attitudinal factors than judges at less politicized courts. The theory holds that informal norms regarding judicial appointment by the executive are more important than the formal selection mechanism in determining whether a judiciary is highly or less politicized. The results show significant attitudinal judicial voting at each high court and strong support for the contention that judges on highly politicized courts are more likely to decide cases ideologically. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The focus of this analysis is whether a strategic perspective provides a useful approach that enhances an understanding of broad patterns of judicial decision making on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. The authors examine whether it is reasonable in the majority of cases for appeals court judges to modify their behavior when necessary to avoid reversal by the Supreme Court. This assessment utilizes statistical analyses and interviews from twenty-eight judges on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Based on a three-part argument, the authors conclude that a strategic perspective is not helpful in understanding the decision calculus of appeals court judges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 defendants' claims when compared to their colleagues on the bench, even after controlling for other important factors. This suggests that our understanding of judicial behaviors may be assisted by the inclusion of how individual characteristics overlap rather than examining those characteristics alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars of the Supreme Court and many justices assert the importance of the Federalist Papers. They provide important evidence of original meaning and interpretation of the Constitution, and there is evidence that there is an increase in citations to the Federalist Papers in Supreme Court opinions. While some may view this increased citation use as a positive development because it demonstrates reliance on legal authority in judicial decisions, we provide evidence that in a period marked by dissensus and controversy, the use of the Federalist Papers represents externally and internally oriented strategic attempts by the justices to add legitimacy to constitutional interpretation, and to sway colleagues. We use a combination of descriptive and multivariate techniques to examine Federalist citations from 1953 to 1995 to demonstrate our interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do newly appointed justices experience acclimation effects upon their ascent to the Supreme Court? We contend that acclimation is a process, as justices' conformation to the doctrine of stare decisis is partly a function of tenure length. We find that precedent conformance is inversely related to tenure, with newcomers following legal precedents at rates significantly greater than more tenured colleagues; however, justices slowly but surely surrender to relatively unfettered judicial power at the Supreme Court, as attitudes increasingly dominate decisionmaking. While votes adhering to precedent are more prevalent for newcomers, all justices are overwhelmingly influenced by their own ideologies, confirming the inability of the legal model to influence or explain this aspect of judicial behavior. Our results also indicate that the proclivity of prior research to specify an express period of acclimation may be flawed. Instead, acclimation is a dynamic process, ever evolving over justices' entire duration of service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the Supreme Court's most famous cases—from Roe v. Wade (1973) to Brown v. Board of Education (1954)—have been decided only after being held over and argued a second time. While few cases take this path, scholars have offered no systematic account for why the Court would ever take such a tack. We develop hypotheses about when reargument is most likely to occur, and test them on all formally decided cases between 1946 and 1985. More specifically, we focus on how justices' uncertainty about case outcomes affects the Court's decision to seek reargument. Our findings demonstrate that reargument is most likely to occur when multiple levels of uncertainty are present, even when we control for other factors that have been raised as explanations for this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the manner in which attitudes regarding specific Supreme Court decisions influence subsequent levels of confidence in the court. Analysis of the impact of the 1989 `Webster' abortion decisions and `Texas v. Johnson,' the flag-burning edict released immediately prior to `Webster'; Information on the estimation of confidence in the Supreme Court; Comments about court decisions.