Search

This research addresses the central product of judicial work, written opinions. We investigate whether lower court judges are in the position to influence the interpretation of law at higher courts through their own opinions. An examination of 847 state supreme court cases in 1997 shows that the writings of lower court judges do serve as a foundational basis in a bottom-up method of opinion writing, which is conditioned by career factors, including previous jobs and being appointed to the state supreme court, and the judicial workload. This research expands our understanding of opinion writing by shedding light on the differences and similarities in the ingredients of judicial opinions at different court levels and corroborates the growing importance and effectiveness of lower court judges in the creation of law. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Scholars of judicial politics have long speculated that the factors influencing judicial decision making operate to varying degrees at different levels of the judicial hierarchy. We investigate what we term the "hierarchy postulate": that the effect of judges' policy preferences on their decisions increases as one moves up the judicial hierarchy. Using original data on cases decided at each level of U.S. federal courts, which allow us to evaluate the impact of policy preferences on judicial decision making while holding constant the influence of case-specific factors, we find robust support for the contention that ideological and policy-related influences on federal judges' decisions are larger at higher levels of the judicial hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]