State Supreme Courts and the Effects of Statutory Constraint
Do state supreme court judges render decisions according to their ideological preferences, or are they constrained by the language of state statutes? Using data from the Judge-Level State Supreme Court Database, the authors analyze the votes of individual judges from 1995 to 1998 to determine whether their behavior is constrained by legislation. The results indicate that more detailed language (resulting in statutes with higher word counts) significantly limits the discretion afforded to liberal judges while simultaneously facilitating the ideological voting of their conservative colleagues.
Does Deference Depend on Distinction? Issue Salience and Judicial Decision-Making in Administrative Law Cases
Judicial deference to administrative agencies is often viewed as a dichotomous choice between full deference and no deference, ignoring considerations of institutional and political context. I argue that a court's decision on whether to defer to an administrative agency is more complex and is conditional on the political salience of the substantive issue in the case. I test this theory in the context of the U.S. Courts of Appeals using a sample of cases decided between 1961 and 2002. The results show that when dealing with non-salient cases, the level of deference to agencies is static, but in salient cases the level of deference is strongly related to the ideological congruence between the court and the agency.
Environmental and Structural Variables as Determinants of Issues in State Courts of Last Resort
The linkage between state socioeconomic and political environments and issues found in decisions of state courts of last resort is explored. It is found that, in general, state courts of last resort in rural, politically undifferentiated states tend to decide larger proportions of private litigation than courts within more highly industrialized, politically competitive states. These latter courts of last resort tend to focus upon criminal law, civil liberties, and economic regulation cases. Multiple regression analysis shows that the six environmental descriptors and one court system variable-the presence or absence of an intermediate appellate court-explain a substantial portion of the variance in the distribution of issues among the states. The study demonstrates that environmental variables are important predictors to the kinds of decisions rendered by courts, and underscores the need for more systematic, comparative analysis of state judicial systems. A considerable body of research published in the last several years has demonstrated the important effects of socioeconomic and political diversification upon political processes and policy outputs. (Dye, 1966; Sharkansky and Hofferbert, 1972). Yet little research has been conducted on the impact of environmental differences on judicial processes and policy. This is not to suggest, however, than the linkage between environmental conditions and courts has been totally ignored. On the contrary, most models of the judicial processes make some reference to this linkage, and the systems model in particular underscores the effects of the flow of demands and conflict from the environment towards the judicial system. (Sigler, 1968; Goldman and Jahnige, 1970). However, while reference is often made to these relationships, the literature is still devoid of empirical research that systematically examines the impact of environment upon judicial action. To remedy this omission, the present study will offer a comparative examination of the relationship between socioeconomic and political conditions within the fifty American states, on the one hand, and issues decided by state courts of last resort on