Case Selection and the Study of Judicial Politics

Kastellec, Jonathan P.; Lax, Jeffrey R.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.951873

Cited by 19 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 86 publications

(84 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Songer, Segal, and Cameron (1994) find that circuit court panels adhere more closely to Supreme Court preferences in cases that are more likely to be appealed, but Klein and Hume (2003) do not. However, the approach taken in these papers has been criticized for failing to account for selection effects (Kim 2007;Lax and Kastellec 2008).…”

Section: Positive Political Theory Of Standards Of Review In Sentencingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, all convicted federal offenders must be sentenced under the guidelines, and the federal conviction rate (including plea bargains) is around 95 percent. Thus, there is no concern that selection effects in litigated cases could confound our estimates (Priest and Klein 1984;Lax and Kastellec 2008). Table A2 gives the descriptive statistics for relevant outcome and control variables in our sample.…”

Section: The Data and Identification Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Do Standards of Review Matter? The Case of Federal Criminal Sentencing

Fischman¹,

Schanzenbach²

2011

The Journal of Legal Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Section: Positive Political Theory Of Standards Of Review In Sentencingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Data and Identification Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Standards of Review Matter? The Case of Federal Criminal Sentencing

Fischman¹,

Schanzenbach²

2011

The Journal of Legal Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The severity of the problem depends, of course, on the relevant circumstances and the assumptions courts have, at the selection phase, regarding the distribution of p and h across the cases. 22 Scholars have turned attention to the far-reaching empirical implications of several selection strategies that the Supreme Court may take (Kastellec and Lax 2008), and the selection process that this paper depicts is another strategy with potentially wide implications to the study of judicial politics.…”

Section: Skewed Pools Of Adjudicated Casesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discretionary review and undesired cases

Lavie

2015

Eur J Law Econ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Courts sometimes face cases that may result in adverse post-judgment official or public reactions. Such real-world repercussions-e.g., open defiance by public officials-can be more costly for the court than the benefit of hearing and deciding the case. In these situations the court may be better off not taking the case from the outset. This paper examines how courts deal with such cases when they can avoid adjudication-discretionary dockets. Using a stylized screening model, the paper examines the implications of such discretion. In particular, it shows that some undesired real-world outcomes are inevitable; and that broad control over their dockets should lead judges to take fewer cases in which the government is involved. Further, the paper discusses this logic from a comparative design perspective. The two prevalent models of judicial review, the American and the European, seem to take opposing stances on discretionary review; however, both narrow supreme courts' control over their dockets, either by directly limiting their discretionary jurisdiction or by decentralizing judicial review.

show abstract

“…Hug (2010) uses unique circumstances in the Swiss lower house to show that votes that were thought by legislators to be confidential differ from those that were known to be public. Kastellec & Lax (2008) use simulations to explore the effects of discretionary case selection on the estimation of judicial ideal points.…”

Section: The Importance Of the Nonrandom Selection Of Roll Call Votesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In such circumstances, simulations can help explore the possible consequences of the various decisions summarized in Figure 1 because we can generate roll calls and estimate parameters for a known data-generating process. Simulation studies are being increasingly used for this reason (e.g., Krehbiel 2000, Kastellec & Lax 2008, Carroll et al 2009, Stiglitz & Weingast 2010, Hirsch 2011), but valuable opportunities remain for exploring concerns like those expressed in the prior section.…”

Section: Assessing Selection Effects Via Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Roll Call Estimates to Test Models of Politics

Clinton

2012

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Measuring the preferences of political elites is critically important for analyzing the determinants and consequences of elite behavior. The decisions that elites make when casting roll call votes seem to provide an ideal opportunity for measuring elite preferences and testing theories of the political process. The fact that the resulting ideal points are a consequence of applying a statistical model to a model of individual choice, however, may affect their usefulness for measuring elite preferences and testing predictions regarding individual and collective decision making. When analyzing roll call votes, scholars should be mindful of how their decisions may affect the estimates from their analyses. I use simulations to illustrate how the nonrandom selection of roll calls may affect the ability to estimate ideal points that accurately reflect the preferences responsible for generating the observed votes, and I discuss work integrating the many models involved in the production and consumption of roll call estimates.

show abstract

Case Selection and the Study of Judicial Politics

Cited by 19 publications

References 86 publications

Do Standards of Review Matter? The Case of Federal Criminal Sentencing

Do Standards of Review Matter? The Case of Federal Criminal Sentencing

Discretionary review and undesired cases

Using Roll Call Estimates to Test Models of Politics

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About