Fear of Reversal as an Explanation of Lower Court Compliance

Klein, David; Hume, Robert J.

doi:10.1111/1540-5893.3703004

Cited by 93 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Given that reversal occurs so rarely, it is small wonder that studies have difficulty identifying any effect that the prospect of reversal might have (Klein & Hume 2003, Songer et al 2003.…”

Section: Reversal Aversionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judging the Judiciary by the Numbers: Empirical Research on Judges

Rachlinski¹,

Wistrich²

2017

Preprint

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 AbstractDo judges make decisions that are truly impartial? A wide range of experimental and field studies reveal that several extra-legal factors influence judicial decision making. Demographic characteristics of judges and litigants affect judges' decisions. Judges also rely heavily on intuitive reasoning in deciding cases, making them vulnerable to the use of mental shortcuts that can lead to mistakes. Furthermore, judges sometimes rely on facts outside the record and rule more favorably towards litigants who are more sympathetic or with whom they share demographic characteristics. On the whole, judges are excellent decision makers, and sometimes resist common errors of judgment that influence ordinary adults. The weight of the evidence, however, suggests that judges are vulnerable to systematic deviations from the ideal of judicial impartiality.

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Section: Reversal Aversionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judging the Judiciary by the Numbers: Empirical Research on Judges

Rachlinski¹,

Wistrich²

2017

Preprint

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“…Research on the appeals courts, however, has found little evidence of reversal aversion (Klein and Hume 2003;Cross 2007; Songer, Humpries and Sarver 2003). With respect to the district 4 district judges want to avoid reversal, and appellate judges decide cases on the basis of political preferences, then district judges will decide cases on the basis of the political preferences of appellate judges.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Do Federal District Judges Want? An Analysis of Publications, Citations, and Reversals

Choi

Gulati²,

Posner

2011

Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization

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We report evidence from a dataset of federal district judges from 2001 to 2002 that district judges adjust their opinion-writing practices to minimize their workload while maximizing their reputation and chance for elevation to a higher court. District judges in circuits with politically uniform circuit judges are better able to predict what opinions will get affirmed by the circuit court, leading to higher publication rates and a higher affirmance rate. In contrast, district judges in circuits with politically diverse circuit judges are less able to predict the preferences of the reviewing circuit court panel, leading district judges to publish fewer but higher quality opinions in an effort to maximize their affirmance rate. IntroductionA large literature has found that Supreme Court justices and federal appellate judges decide cases at least partly on the basis of ideological preferences. Scholarship on district court judges has been less extensive, and its results less consistent. Some research finds that district court judges are influenced by ideological preferences, especially in sentencing and cases involving salient topics, but other research finds little or no correlation between ideological preferences and decisions (Rowland and Carp 1983;Rowland and Carp 1996;Ashenfelter, Eisenberg and Schwab 1995).The most plausible explanation for these different results is that district judges are more closely supervised than are judges higher up in the court hierarchy. Supreme Court justices do not face review and appellate court judges face review in only a tiny fraction of the cases they decide. By contrast, district judges are routinely subject to appellate review. Reversal can be a burden for district judges, requiring them sometimes to conduct new trials and usually to hear new motions. At the same time, pressure is put on district judges to clear their dockets-to decide cases expeditiously. Reversal is also potentially embarrassing and detrimental to a trial judge's prospects for promotion to the appeals courts. Judges on the appeals courts, by contrast, have little prospect of promotion.We suspect that district judges care as much about political outcomes as appellate judges do, but cannot advance their ideological preferences because they are subject to appellate review.Thus, we hypothesize that district judges care about minimizing their workload and maximizing their reputation (and hopes for elevation to an appellate court) by avoiding appellate reversal.2 If 2 The literature on judging frequently mentions the aversion of judges to reversal (Higgins and Rubin 1980; Drahozal 1988;Watson 1988). Research on the appeals courts, however, has found little evidence of reversal aversion (Klein and Hume 2003;Cross 2007; Songer, Humpries and Sarver 2003). With respect to the district 4 district judges want to avoid reversal, and appellate judges decide cases on the basis of political preferences, then district judges will decide cases on the basis of the political preferences of appellate judges. When d...

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“…That is, even for random selection, there will be a nonnegligible degree of measurement error, which should be taken into account in drawing inferences from such compliance studies. It is worth noting that the degree of misclassification is roughly equal to the noncompliance level found by Klein and Hume (2003) and is perhaps greater than the overall amount of noncompliance that previous studies have found to exist among lower federal courts (e.g., Gruhl 1980;Songer & Sheehan 1990). …”

Section: Percent Misclassificationsmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…The third set of bars in Figure 1 shows that a majority of liberal decisions-61 percent-are measured as noncompliant, compared to 14 percent of conservative decisions. Although one might seek to explain this discrepancy by assuming that liberal panels are simply more likely to disobey the Supreme Court, breaking Note: Percentages are based on data analyzed in Klein and Hume (2003). The first set of bars shows that the direction of case outcomes varies little by panel ideology.…”

Section: B Compliance and The Noncompliance Puzzlementioning

confidence: 99%