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Why do we witness variation in the level of judicial attention to rights litigation across countries and over time? Traditional explanations emphasize the constitutional recognition of rights, judicial leadership, and the development in society of a sophisticated “support structure for legal mobilization,” as key covariates of these phenomena. Yet, there is a dearth of quantitative empirical analyses that evaluate these explanations comparatively and actually test their relative influence on trends of rights litigation and protection. Perhaps the most important lacuna in this regard is an assessment of the influence of institutional conditions and modifications in bringing about or facilitating the transformation of the rights scene. To contribute to closing this gap, this article empirically assesses the short and long term impacts of ideology, support structure, and institutional protection on changes in the presence of rights litigation in the dockets of the High Courts of several democracies with Common Law systems. To this purpose, we perform time-series analyses on data from the High Courts Judicial Database and the Spaeth U.S. Supreme Court Database. Our analyses indicate that once one properly models temporal effects, increasing support structures do not influence increases in rights litigation. Rather, specific institutional changes and ideological influences play a significant role in the High Courts’ attention to individual rights. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Though previous research on party capability demonstrates that the "haves" win more often in litigation than the "have-nots," this conclusion contradicts the conventional wisdom among the general populace that views the judiciary as the institution most likely to protect individual rights. This raises the question whether an area of the law exists where the courts tend to favor the have-nots over the haves. Using data from the Courts of Appeals Database, our results demonstrate that health-care policy cases present an opportunity for the have-nots to offset advantages typically possessed by the haves, thereby increasing their chances to prevail in litigation. Whether one examines average success rates for appellants, the "net advantage" for litigants, or a more sophisticated statistical model, the data indicate that individuals (i.e., the have-nots) typically enjoy larger success rates than either state and local government or the federal government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the September 11th attacks, questions regarding the relationship of civil liberties to foreign affairs have received renewed salience within our society. This paper reviews historical patterns of decision-making in the U.S. Supreme Court and the courts of appeals when confronted with questions of individual rights versus the government's ability to engage in foreign relations. Using an original dataset of federal cases from 1946 to 2000, this Article examines the influence of competing preferences and constraints (i.e., individual rights versus security) on judicial behavior. The empirical results indicate that traditional notions of ideology and preferences over security concerns significantly affect the federal judicial system. However; examinations of individual court levels reveal that the lower courts respond more to security concerns, whereas the Supreme Court is influenced solely by ideological proclivities. Scholars of the judiciary who do not account for these additional dimensions may not adequately capture the complete decision-making processes across the judicial system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes foreign affairs litigation in the United States Courts of Appeals. Understanding of how the judiciary operates in the foreign relations scheme; Influence of competing preferences on decision making; Paradoxical dilemma facing judges in foreign policy cases; Theoretical expectations for judicial behavior.

This article was written as a rejoinder to a response by Professor Charles R. Epp about an article on rights. The article discusses civil rights and liberties and the support structures that sustain them. The article discusses how rights litigation is affected by these support mechanisms and the research methods examining it. The article describes methodology related to time-series analyses, error correction models, and conditions and correlations. Information is also provided on the financial aspects of litigation campaigns.