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Scholars who examine judicial independence offer various theories regarding its development. Some argue that it serves as a type of insurance for regimes who believe their majority status is in jeopardy. Other scholars argue that insurance theory does not offer an adequate explanation until states democratize. We argue that part of the explanation for these mixed results involves the inadequacy of insurance theory as a complete explanation. Our paper develops a multidimensional theory that focuses on the interplay of constraints on ruling elites derived from levels of political competition within the government, the potential for social competition within the state, and regime type. We test our argument using a dataset of approximately 145 countries over forty years, and our results support the argument that development of judicial independence is related to the political landscape encountered by the executive. Ethnic fractionalization in the state, political competition, and regime type each has a conditional effect on the observation of judicial independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do state supreme court judges render decisions according to their ideological preferences, or are they constrained by the language of state statutes? Using data from the Judge-Level State Supreme Court Database, the authors analyze the votes of individual judges from 1995 to 1998 to determine whether their behavior is constrained by legislation. The results indicate that more detailed language (resulting in statutes with higher word counts) significantly limits the discretion afforded to liberal judges while simultaneously facilitating the ideological voting of their conservative colleagues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Does the hierarchical relationship between the district courts and the courts of appeals influence decision making at the trial level? Do these judges anticipate responses by appellate panels and condition their decisions based on these expectations? Using a sample of district court cases from 1925 to 1996 that were subsequently reviewed by the courts of appeals, and incorporating a strategic choice statistical framework, I discover that the district courts are constrained by the anticipated responses of the appeals courts. However, this conclusion is not apparent if one analyzes the data using traditional maximum likelihood methods. Only when empirical analyses specifically model underlying strategic relationships does one discover this constraint. If the federal trial judges anticipate a negative response on appeal, then they curtail their ideological influences (the magnitude of influence decreases by approximately one-half). This pattern remains consistent when one examines civil liberties and economic cases, but not for criminal cases. Thus, the hierarchical structure of the federal judiciary appears to exert a significant constraint on the district courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]