Dissent in American Courts

Peterson, Steven A.

doi:10.2307/2130375

Cited by 40 publications

(28 citation statements)

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“…Our results suggest that by using negative language in their dissents, justices can increase media coverage of the cases before them and, according to Baird ð2004Þ, encourage further litigation on those issues. Though such action may only rarely lead to the outright overturning of the majority's decision ðScalia 1994Þ, dissenters may succeed in influencing how the law develops in a particular area by signaling those outside the Court such as potential litigants, lower court judges, governmental actors, and the public ðe.g., Peterson 1981;Brennan 1986;Wahlbeck et al 1999;Ginsburg 2010Þ. While our finding that negative dissents increase newspaper coverage of a case reinforces the conventional wisdom that conflict enhances the newsworthiness of an event, we advance this literature in an important way. The results show that individual justices are in a position to influence media coverage of a case.…”

Section: R E S U Lt S a N D Discussionsupporting

confidence: 51%

Jeremiad or Weapon of Words?

Bryan

Ringsmuth

2016

J. law courts

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Unable to directly control the policy articulated by the Supreme Court, dissenting justices are faced with the challenge of finding alternative ways to pursue their policy goals. We argue that one strategy available to them is to use their power over the language of a dissenting opinion to increase the media attention paid to a case. Our results show that cases with negative dissents attract more media coverage, which creates a variety of mechanisms through which a dissenter’s policy preferences could be realized, such as inducing Congress to take action, influencing public debate on the issue, and provoking further litigation. This finding ultimately suggests that dissenters, while disadvantaged, are not powerless to affect legal policy.

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Section: R E S U Lt S a N D Discussionsupporting

confidence: 51%

Jeremiad or Weapon of Words?

Bryan

Ringsmuth

2016

J. law courts

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“…One measure of sociopolitical complexity that has been employed in studies examining the reasons for dissent in courts in the United States is the urbanization rate (see, e.g., Jaros & Canon 1971; Glick & Vines 1973; Vines & Glick 1976). Our hypothesis is that increasing rates of urbanization produce the conditions for increased demands and conflicts in the political arena, which will spill over to the courts, thus generating legal conflict (Peterson 1981:420). As Jaros and Canon describe the rationale for using the urbanization rate to proxy sociopolitical complexity:…”

Section: Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another possible reason for judicial dissent is changing social values. In this respect, Schmidhauser (1962:209) argues that the typical dissenter on the U.S. Supreme Court is not a judicial innovator, but “a tenacious advocate of traditional legal doctrines which were being abandoned during his tenure.” Historical examples from the U.S. Supreme Court are Peter V. Daniel who attempted unsuccessfully to defend l'ancien regime in the mid‐1800s (Frank 1964) or the attempt of the “Four Horsemen” in the 1930s to maintain the values of earlier times (Peterson 1981). To some extent, changing social values will be reflected in the urbanization rate.…”

Section: Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Explains Dissent on the High Court of Australia? An Empirical Assessment Using a Cointegration and Error Correction Approach

Narayan

Smyth

2007

J Empirical Legal Studies

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This article examines the factors influencing the annual dissent rate on the High Court of Australia from its first full year of operation in 1904 up to 2001 within a cointegration and error correction framework. We hypothesize that institutional factors, socioeconomic complexity, and leadership style explain variations in the dissent rate on the High Court of Australia over time. The institutional factors that we consider are the Court's caseload, whether it had discretion to select the cases it hears, and whether it was a final court of appeal. To measure socioeconomic complexity we use the divorce rate, urbanization rate, and real GDP per capita. Our main finding is that in the long run and short run, caseload and real income are the main factors influencing dissent. We find that a 1 percent increase in caseload and real income reduce the dissent rate on the High Court of Australia by 0.3 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively, holding other factors constant.

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“…Past research on consensual decision making regarding specific policy matters has mostly centered on issues of judicial consensus within supreme courts (e.g., Brace, 1989, 1990;Haynie, 1992;Peterson, 1981;Ulmer, 1986;Walker, Epstein and Dixon, 1988). These studies have explored the roles of leadership, legislative change, and institutional structure of the courts on judicial consensus.…”

Section: Past Research On Consensual Decision Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agent heterogeneity and consensual decision making on the Federal Open Market Committee

Krause

1996

Public Choice

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The consensual aspects of decision making are essential for understanding policy made by administrative organizations that take the form of a commision or board. Consensual decision making reflects the degree of policy cohesion exhibited by high-level officials within administrative organizations. It is proposed here that this type of behavior may differ between heterogeneous agents. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve System serves as a salient setting for testing these propositions in a time series context. The empirical results indicate that major intra-institutional differences exist between Board of Governor (BOG) and Regional Bank President (RBP) members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) regarding consensual behavior. In terms of policy decision making, the econometric evidence clearly demonstrates that the consensual behavior of these agents are fundamentally different from one another. This in turn has important implications for the study of other commission and board policy making bodies that consist of agents who are not all homogeneous.

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Dissent in American Courts

Cited by 40 publications

References 0 publications

Jeremiad or Weapon of Words?

Jeremiad or Weapon of Words?

What Explains Dissent on the High Court of Australia? An Empirical Assessment Using a Cointegration and Error Correction Approach

Agent heterogeneity and consensual decision making on the Federal Open Market Committee

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