Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xm8r8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-27T03:44:52.291Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Strategic Anticipation of En Banc Review in the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Rachael K. Hinkle
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The quest for empirical evidence of strategic judicial behavior has produced mixed results. This study finds such evidence in the decisions made while crafting an opinion. Central to any opinion is which precedents are cited and whether their scope is limited (negative treatment) or expanded (positive treatment). I look for evidence of strategic anticipation of en banc review in these decisions using an original dataset of published search and seizure cases from the U.S. Courts of Appeals from 1953 to 2010. A panel is less likely to negatively treat a precedent with which the full circuit is more closely aligned. Circuit preferences also have an effect on citation itself, but only when the panel is at least moderately aligned with a precedent. Moreover, the panel's own ideology is only a significant predictor of citation when the full circuit is favorably disposed toward a particular precedent.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 383 - 414
Copyright
© 2016 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I would like to thank the many people who have given me helpful comments and provided invaluable insights including the anonymous reviewers, Jeff Gill, Morgan Hazelton, Pauline Kim, Bill Lowry, Andrew Martin, Michael Nelson, Jeff Segal, Jim Spriggs, and Peter Wiedenbeck. Any remaining errors are my sole responsibility.

References

Aldisert, Ruggero J. (1989) “Precedent: What It Is and What It Isn't: When Do We Kiss It and When Do We Kill It,” 17 Pepperdine Law Rev. 605–36.Google Scholar
Atkins, Burton M. (1972) “Decision-Making Rules and Judicial Strategy on the United States Courts of Appeals,” 25 Western Political Q. 626–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnett, Stephen R. (2002) “From Anastasoff to Hart to West's Federal Appendix: The Ground Shifts Under No-Citation Rules,” 4 J. of Appellate Practice & Process 1–26.Google Scholar
Barrow, Deborah J., & Walker, Thomas G. (1988) A Court Divided: The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Politics of Judicial Reform. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baum, Lawrence (2009) The Puzzle of Judicial Behavior. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Black, Ryan C., & Spriggs, James F. II (2008) “An Empirical Analysis of the Trends, Determinants, and Effects of the Length of Majority Opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court,” 45 Houston Law Review 621–82.Google Scholar
Black, Ryan C., & Spriggs, James F. II (2013) “The Citation and Depreciation of U.S. Supreme Court Precedent,” 10 J. of Empirical Legal Studies 325–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackstone, Bethany, & Collins, Paul M. Jr. (2014) “Strategy and the Decision to Dissent on the U.S. Courts of Appeals,” 35 Justice System J. 269–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borooah, Vani K. (2002) Logit and Probit: Ordered and Multinomial Models. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowie, Jennifer, & Songer, Donald R. (2009) “Assessing the Applicability of Strategic Theory to Explain Decision Making on the Courts of Appeals,” 62 Political Research Q. 393–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, Christina L., & Spriggs, James F. II (2009) “An Examination of Strategic Anticipation of Appellate Court Preferences by Federal District Court Judges,” 29 Washington University J. of Law & Policy 37–81.Google Scholar
Braman, Eileen, & Nelson, Thomas E. (2007) “Mechanism of Motivated Reasoning? Analogical Perception in Discrimination Disputes,” 51 American J. of Political Science 940–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brambor, Thomas, Clark, William Roberts, & Golder, Matt (2006) “Understanding Interaction Models: Improving Empirical Analyses,” 14 Political Analysis 63–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choi, Stephen J., & Mitu Gulati, G. (2008) “Bias in Judicial Citations: A Window into the Behavior of Judges?” 37 J. of Legal Studies 87–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Tom S. (2009) “A Principal-Agent Theory of En Banc Review,” 25 J. of Law, Economics, & Organization 55–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Tom S., & Carrubba, Clifford J. (2012) “A Theory of Opinion Writing in a Political Hierarchy,” 74 J. of Politics 584–603.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Paul M., & Martinek, Wendy L. (2011) “The Small Group Context: Designated District Court Judges in the U.S. Courts of Appeals,” 8 J. of Empirical Legal Studies 177–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cross, Frank (2005) “Appellate Court Adherence to Precedent,” 2 J. of Empirical Legal Studies 369–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cross, Frank B. (2007) Decision Making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cross, Frank B., & Tiller, Emerson H. (1998) “Judicial Partisanship and Obedience to Legal Doctrine: Whistleblowing on the Federal Courts of Appeals,” 107 Yale Law J. 2155–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Lee, et al. (2007) “The Judicial Common Space,” 23 J. of Law, Economics, & Organization 303–25. Data available at http://epstein.usc.edu/research/JCS.html.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Lee, Landes, William M., & Posner, Richard A. (2013) The Behavior of Federal Judges. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Gerhardt, Michael J. (2008) The Power of Precedent. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giles, Micheal W., Walker, Thomas G., & Zorn, Christopher (2006) “Setting a Judicial Agenda: The Decision to Grant En Banc Review in the U.S. Courts of Appeals,” 68 J. of Politics 852–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giles, Micheal W., Hettinger, Virginia A., & Peppers, Todd (2001) “Picking Federal Judges: A Note on Policy and Partisan Selection Agendas,” 54 Political Research Q. 623–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giles, Micheal W., et al. (2007) “The Etiology of the Occurrence of En Banc Review in the U.S. Court of Appeals,” 51 American J. of Political Science 449–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansford, Thomas G., & Spriggs, James F. II (2006) The Politics of Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heckman, James J. (1979) “Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error,” 47 Econometrica 153–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hettinger, Virginia A., Lindquist, Stefanie A., & Martinek, Wendy L. (2004) “Comparing Attitudinal and Strategic Accounts of Dissenting Behavior on the U.S. Courts of Appeals,” 48 American J. of Political Science 123–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hettinger, Virginia A., Lindquist, Stefanie A., & Martinek, Wendy L. (2006) Judging on a Collegial Court. Charlottesville, VA: Univ. of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Hinkle, Rachael K. (2015) “Legal Constraint in the U.S. Courts of Appeals,” 77 J. of Politics 721–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinkle, Rachael K., et al. (2012) “A Positive Theory and Empirical Analysis of Strategic Word Choice in District Court Opinions,” 4 J. of Legal Analysis 407–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hume, Robert J. (2009) “The Impact of Judicial Opinion Language on the Transmission of Federal Circuit Court Precedents,” 43 Law & Society Rev. 127–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Charles A. (1979) “Lower Court Reactions to Supreme Court Decisions: A Quantitative Examination,” 23 American J. of Political Science 792–804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Pauline T. (2006) “Lower Court Discretion,” 82 New York Uni. Law Rev. 383–442.Google Scholar
Kim, Pauline T. (2009) “Deliberation and Strategy on the United States Courts of Appeals: An Empirical Exploration of Panel Effects,” 157 University of Pennsylvania Law Rev. 1319–81.Google Scholar
King, Gary, Tomz, Michael, & Wittenberg, Jason (2000) “Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation,” 44 American J. of Political Science 347–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, David, & Morrisroe, Darby (1999) “The Prestige and Influence of Individual Judges on the U.S. Courts of Appeals,” 28 J. of Legal Studies 371–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, David E. (2002) Making Law in the United States Courts of Appeals. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, David E., & Hume, Robert J. (2003) “Fear of Reversal as an Explanation of Lower Court Compliance,” 37 Law & Society Rev. 579–606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landes, William M., Lessig, Lawrence, & Solimine, Michael E. (1998) “Judicial Influence: A Citation Analysis of Federal Courts of Appeals Judges,” 27 J. of Legal Studies 271–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupia, Arthur (2002) “Who Can Persuade Whom? Implications from the Nexus of Psychology and Rational Choice Theory,” in J. Kulklinski, ed., Thinking About Political Psychology. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Manning, Christopher D., Raghavan, Prabhakar, & Schütze, Hinrich (2008) Introduction to Information Retrieval, Vol. 1. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merritt, Gilbert S. (1990) “Judges on Judging: The Decision Making Process in Federal Courts of Appeals,” 51 Ohio State Law J. 1385–97.Google Scholar
Niblett, Anthony (2010) “Do Judges Cherry Pick Precedents to Justify Extra-Legal Decisions? A Statistical Examination,” 70 Maryland Law Rev. 234–71.Google Scholar
Poole, Keith T. (1998) “Recovering a Basic Space from a Set of Issue Scales,” 42 American J. of Political Science 954–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, Richard A. (2008) How Judges Think. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Schauer, Frederick (1987) “Precedent,” 39 Stanford Law Review 571–605.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Joseph L. (2006) “Patterns and Consequences of Judicial Reversals: Theoretical Considerations and Data from a District Court,” 27 Justice System J. 28–46.Google Scholar
Smith, Joseph L., & Tiller, Emerson H. (2002) “The Strategy of Judging: Evidence from Administrative Law,” 31 J. of Legal Studies 61–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spriggs, James F. II, & Hansford, Thomas G. (2000) “Measuring Legal Change: The Reliability and Validity of Shepard's Citations,” 53 Political Research Quarterly 327–41.Google Scholar
Spriggs, James F. II, & Hansford, Thomas G. (2002) “The U.S. Supreme Court's Incorporation and Interpretation of Precedent,” 36 Law & Society Review 139–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Winkle, Steven R. (1997) “Dissent as a Signal: Evidence from the U.S. Courts of Appeals.” Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Westerland, Chad, et al. (2010) “Strategic Defiance and Compliance in the U.S. Courts of Appeals,” 54 American J. of Political Science 891–905.CrossRefGoogle Scholar