Panel Composition and Judicial Compliance on the US Courts of Appeals

Abstract

This article integrates the literatures on judicial compliance, panel decision making, and case selection in the federal judiciary hierarchy. Many studies have speculated that ''panel effects''-the phenomena under which an individual judge's vote may depend on her colleagues on a three-judge panel-can be tied to a ''whistleblower effect,'' through which a lower court judge can constrain a panel majority from disobeying with Supreme Court precedent by threatening to dissent. However, no study has systematically found such a relationship. I present a game-theoretic model of circuit court-Supreme Court interaction that demonstrates how panel composition might affect the likelihood of lower court compliance to Supreme Court doctrine. The model illustrates how three-judge panels, while not inducing perfect doctrinal control of lower courts by the Supreme Court, significantly increases the latter's ability to see its preferred doctrine carried out by its subordinates in the judicial hierarchy.

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

“…Although recent empirical literature on appellate review suggests that circuit judges are subject to ideological influences (for example, Revesz 1997;Sunstein et al 2006;Miles andSunstein 2006, 2008), these findings are not inconsistent with a constraining effect of legal doctrine (Kastellec 2007;Tiller and Cross 1998).…”

Bargaining and Opinion Assignment on the U.S. Supreme Court

“…Thus, judge-created rules embody the content of judicial policy, and bargaining over judicial policy on collegial courts typically involves bargaining over the content of legal rules. We follow Kornhauser (1992), Spiller and Spitzer (1992), Cameron, Segal, and Songer (2000), Lax (2003), Lax (2006) and Kastellec (2006) in utilizing a case-space framework to study judicial decision-making, a framework that a¤ords a straightforward formalization of these concepts.…”

“…These allow us to explain well-known empirical regularities and generate new propositions, all within a uni…ed, internally consistent framework. In addition, we employ a case-space framework (Kornhauser 1992, Spiller and Spitzer 1992, Cameron, Segal and Songer 2000, Lax 2003, Lax 2006, Kastellec 2006) so that legal concepts like "opinions," "cases,""legal rules,""judgments"and "dispositions"have explicit and clear meanings.…”

Political Constraints on Legal Doctrine: How Hierarchy Shapes the Law

“…The case-space model is a variant of and supplement to the policyspace model common in political science. It has its origins in Kornhauser (1992a,b) with further development in Cameron (1993), Grofman (1993), Cameron, Segal and Songer (2000), Lax (2003Lax ( , 2007, Lax and Cameron (2007), Kastellec (2007), and Lax (2008, 2009). It is tailored to capture the substance and institutional features of judicial policy making, putting case facts and legal doctrine at the analytic center, without rejecting a role for judicial preferences.…”