Partisan cues have a significant influence on the public’ssupport for the Supreme Court

This month the Supreme Court is due to announce its decision in the King v. Burwell case, which will determine whether federally-run health care exchanges may provide subsidies to individuals under the Affordable Care Act. Many Republicans hope the Court rules that such subsidies may not be provided under the text of the statute, while some Democrats, including President Obama, argue that the case should never have been heard. But is the public’s opinion of the Supreme Court shaped by such partisan messages? In new research, Tom Clark and John Kastellec find that the public’s opinion of the court is shaped by messages from their co-partisans: among members of the public, Democrats and Republicans are much more likely to support limitations to the independence of the Supreme Court when they are told that such limitations have been proposed by members of their own party. They write that while evaluations of the Supreme Court may be easily shaped by partisan attacks, so long as one party supports its decisions the Court may be insulated from this criticism to some degree

Judges differ substantially in their likelihood of granting relief from a death sentence, but several features of the federal judicial hierarchy increase legal consistency

A recent spate of apparently botched executions has once again brought the death penalty and defendants’ appeals against their sentences into the spotlight. But are decisions about sentences made consistently across the federal judiciary? By examining over 1,400 death penalty decisions made by three-judge panels over a thirty year period, Deborah Beim and John Kastellec find that panels with three Democratic judges are much more likely to grant relief to a defendant than panels with even a single Republican. This apparent problem of consistency is mitigated, however, by the institutional features of the federal courts. In particular, judges can dissent from decisions they disagree with, which can serve as a signal to higher courts that the panel’s decision warrants a review. Since most death penalty cases are heard in Republican-controlled circuits, this means that there is greater oversight of liberal decisions, and greater consistency in the law

Signaling and Counter-Signaling in the Judicial Hierarchy: An Empirical Analysis of En Banc Review

We leverage the institutional features of American courts to evaluate the importance of whistleblowers in hierarchical oversight. Drawing on a formal theory of signaling in the judicial hierarchy, we examine the role of whistleblowing dissents in triggering en banc review of three-judge panels by full circuits of the Courts of Appeals. The theory generates predictions about how dissent interacts with judicial preferences to influence circuits' review and reversal decisions, which we test using original and existing data. First, we show that judges who dissent counter to their preferences are more likely to see their dissents lead to review and reversal. Second, we show that dissents are most influential when the likelihood of non-compliance by a three-judge panel is highest. Our results underscore the importance of dissent in the judicial hierarchy and illustrate how judicial whistleblowers can help appellate courts target the most important cases for review

Whistleblowing and Compliance in the Judicial Hierarchy

One way that principals can overcome the problem of informational asymmetries in hierarchical organizations is to enable whistleblowing. We evaluate how whistleblowing influences compliance in the judicial hierarchy. We present a formal model in which a potential whistleblower may, at some cost, signal noncompliance by a lower court to a higher court. A key insight of the model is that whistleblowing is most informative when it is rare. While the presence of a whistleblower can increase compliance by lower courts, beyond a certain point blowing the whistle is counterproductive and actually reduces compliance. Moreover, a whistleblower who is a “perfect ally” of the higher court (in terms of preferences) blows the whistle too often. Our model shows an important connection between the frequency of whistleblowing and the effectiveness of whistleblowing as a threat to induce compliance in hierarchical organizations

The Marshall Courier, December 21, 1950

© 2015 Southern Political Science Association. Do senators respond to the preferences of their state's median voter or only to the preferences of their copartisans? We develop a method for estimating state-level public opinion broken down by partisanship so that scholars can distinguish between general and partisan responsiveness. We use this to study responsiveness in the context of Senate confirmation votes on Supreme Court nominees. We find that senators weight their partisan base far more heavily when casting such roll call votes. Indeed, when their state median voter and party median voter disagree, senators strongly favor the latter. This has significant implications for the study of legislative responsiveness and the role of public opinion in shaping the members of the nation's highest court. The methodological approach we develop enables more nuanced analyses of public opinion and its effects, as well as more finely grained studies of legislative behavior and policy making

Signaling and Counter-Signaling in the Judicial Hierarchy: An Empirical Analysis of En Banc Review

We leverage the institutional features of American courts to evaluate the importance of whistleblowers in hierarchical oversight. Drawing on a formal theory of signaling in the judicial hierarchy, we examine the role of whistleblowing dissents in triggering en banc review of three-judge panels by full circuits of the Courts of Appeals. The theory generates predictions about how dissent interacts with judicial preferences to influence circuits' review and reversal decisions, which we test using original and existing data. First, we show that judges who dissent counter to their preferences are more likely to see their dissents lead to review and reversal. Second, we show that dissents are most influential when the likelihood of non-compliance by a three-judge panel is highest. Our results underscore the importance of dissent in the judicial hierarchy and illustrate how judicial whistleblowers can help appellate courts target the most important cases for review

Whistleblowing and Compliance in the Judicial Hierarchy

One way that principals can overcome the problem of informational asymmetries in hierarchical organizations is to enable whistleblowing. We evaluate how whistleblowing influences compliance in the judicial hierarchy. We present a formal model in which a potential whistleblower may, at some cost, signal noncompliance by a lower court to a higher court. A key insight of the model is that whistleblowing is most informative when it is rare. While the presence of a whistleblower can increase compliance by lower courts, beyond a certain point blowing the whistle is counterproductive and actually reduces compliance. Moreover, a whistleblower who is a “perfect ally” of the higher court (in terms of preferences) blows the whistle too often. Our model shows an important connection between the frequency of whistleblowing and the effectiveness of whistleblowing as a threat to induce compliance in hierarchical organizations