Attitudinal and Neo-Institutional Models of Supreme Court Decision Making: An Empirical and Comparative Perspective from Israel

Weinshall-Margel, Keren

doi:10.1111/j.1740-1461.2011.01220.x

Cited by 28 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…To examine the potential influence of variation in the laws being challenged, we included several additional variables to control for case facts that are indicative of free exercise challenges (Weinshall‐Margel ). D ietary restriction is a dummy variable coded 1 if the restriction on free exercise of religion concerned a limitation on diet, 0 otherwise.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Certiorari Contingent on Litigant Behavior? Petitioners' Role in Strategic Auditing

Mak

Sidman

Sommer

2013

J Empirical Legal Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Complementing the burgeoning literature on agenda setting on the Supreme Court of the United States, this article addresses a key question heretofore overlooked—Is the justices' choice to review a decision independent of the selection of cases for review by the litigants? We argue that the certiorari process cannot be modeled as an independent one; rather, it is inextricably linked with and essentially contingent on the behavior of litigants who bring the case to the Supreme Court. This dependence of the Court is important both at the level of theory and at the empirical level and ignoring it entails bias in the estimation process. Using an original database, which includes the universe of religion free exercise cases decided at the courts of appeals from 1968–2006, we find significant selection effects. Factors that influence decisions on certiorari are dependent on the behavior of petitioners and should be modeled as such.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Certiorari Contingent on Litigant Behavior? Petitioners' Role in Strategic Auditing

Mak

Sidman

Sommer

2013

J Empirical Legal Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…On the one hand, judges are generally considered to be nonpartisan. In fact, it is rarely possible to infer the ideology of a judge in Israel from the identity of the political bloc that is in power during her confirmation (Weinshall‐Margel , 563). Partly because judges are appointed, for the most part, according to merit rather than political affiliation, the judicial system is generally held in high esteem by the Israeli public (Fishman, Rattner, and Turjeman ).…”

Section: The Political and Judicial Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Descriptive Representation and Judicial Outcomes in Multiethnic Societies

Grossman

Gazal‐Ayal

Pimentel

et al. 2015

American J Political Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The extent to which judicial outcomes depend on judges' identities is a central question in multiethnic societies. Past work on the impact of the racial composition of appellate courts has narrowly focused on civil rights cases in the United States. We expand this literature by testing for ethnicity-based panel effects in criminal appeals in Israel. Using randomness in the assignment of cases to panels, we find that appeal outcomes for Jewish defendants are independent of panels' ethnic composition. By contrast, panel composition is highly consequential for Arab defendants, who receive more lenient punishments when their case is heard by a panel that includes at least one Arab judge, compared to all-Jewish panels. The magnitude of these effects is sizable: a 14-20% reduction in incarceration and a 15-26% reduction in prison sentencing. These findings contribute to recent debates on the relationship between descriptive representation and substantive outcomes in judicial bodies.

show abstract

“…According to public choice theory, which complements our analysis, the judges have independent interests and goals separate from those of the elite, which stem from their bureaucratic position from which they benefit. The composition of the court, the way judges are appointed (an issue in the US), their worldviews as well as other social and political processes that prompt the Court to interpret the law and approve or reject various policy reforms make the Court a major political institution endowed with a remarkable ability to strengthen its institutional interests [70, 71]. Finally, the media play a role in the increase in the institutional power of the Supreme Court, especially the establishment of its position among the Israeli elite.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A neo-institutional analysis of the hidden interaction between the Israeli Supreme Court and the Ministry of Finance: the right to healthcare services

Sperling

Cohen

2018

Isr J Health Policy Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundUnder structural conditions of non-governability, most players in the policy arena in Israel turn to two main channels that have proven effective in promoting the policies they seek: the submission of petitions to the High Court of Justice and making legislative amendments through the Economic Arrangements Law initiated by the Ministry of Finance. Nevertheless, an analysis of the principal trends emerging from the High Court of Justice rulings and legislative amendments through the Economic Arrangements Law indicates that these channels are open to influence, primarily by forces that are essentially neo-liberal. Little is known about the effects of these trends on the right to healthcare services, which in Israel has not been legislated as an independent constitutional law in Basic Laws.MethodsWe use four major legal cases decided by the Supreme Court of Israel in the past 10 years where the Court reviewed new legislative initiatives proposed by the Economic Arrangements Law in the area of healthcare. We utilize an institutional approach in our analysis.ResultsA neo-institutional analysis of the legal cases demonstrates that petitions against the Economic Arrangements Law in the area of healthcare services have been denied, even though the Court uses strong rhetoric against that law and the government more generally in addressing issues that concern access to healthcare services and reforms in the healthcare system. This move strengthens the trend toward a neo-liberal public policy and significantly weakens the legal protection of the right to healthcare services.ConclusionIn deciding petitions against the Economic Arrangements Law in the area of healthcare, the Supreme Court allows the Ministry of Finance to be a dominant player in the formation of public policy. In doing so, it may be promoting a goal of strengthening its position as a political institution that aspires to increase the public’s trust in the judiciary and especially in the Supreme Court itself, in addition to exercising judicial restraint and allowing more leeway to the executive and legislative branches more generally.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s13584-018-0261-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

show abstract

Attitudinal and Neo-Institutional Models of Supreme Court Decision Making: An Empirical and Comparative Perspective from Israel

Cited by 28 publications

References 49 publications

Is Certiorari Contingent on Litigant Behavior? Petitioners' Role in Strategic Auditing

Is Certiorari Contingent on Litigant Behavior? Petitioners' Role in Strategic Auditing

Descriptive Representation and Judicial Outcomes in Multiethnic Societies

A neo-institutional analysis of the hidden interaction between the Israeli Supreme Court and the Ministry of Finance: the right to healthcare services

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About