The Behavior of Federal Judges : A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice / Lee Epstein, William M Landes, Richard A Posner.
2013
KF5130 .E67 2013eb
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Title
The Behavior of Federal Judges : A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice / Lee Epstein, William M Landes, Richard A Posner.
Author
Epstein, Lee, author.
ISBN
9780674067325
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2013]
Copyright
©2012
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (446 p.) : 20 graphs, 100 tables
Other Standard Identifiers
10.4159/harvard.9780674067325 doi
Call Number
KF5130 .E67 2013eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
347.7314
Summary
Judges play a central role in the American legal system, but their behavior as decision makers is not well understood, even among themselves. The system permits judges to be quite secretive (and most of them are), so indirect methods are required to make sense of their behavior. Here, a political scientist, an economist, and a judge work together to construct a unified theory of judicial decision-making. Using statistical methods to test hypotheses, they dispel the mystery of how judicial decisions in district courts, circuit courts, and the Supreme Court are made. The authors derive their hypotheses from a labor-market model, which allows them to consider judges as they would any other economic actors: as self-interested individuals motivated by both the pecuniary and non-pecuniary aspects of their work. In their view, this model describes judicial behavior better than either the traditional "legalist" theory, which sees judges as automatons who mechanically apply the law to the facts, or the current dominant theory in political science, which exaggerates the ideological component in judicial behavior. Ideology does figure into decision-making at all levels of the federal judiciary, the authors find, but its influence is not uniform. It diminishes as one moves down the judicial hierarchy from the Supreme Court to the courts of appeals to the district courts. As The Behavior of Federal Judges demonstrates, the good news is that ideology does not extinguish the influence of other components in judicial decision-making. Federal judges are not just robots or politicians in robes.
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Access limited to authorized users.
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Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
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text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Aug 2021)
Added Author
Landes, William M, author.
Posner, Richard A, author.
Posner, Richard A, author.
In
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Harvard University Press eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
E-BOOK PACKAGE LAW 2013
E-BOOK PAKET RECHTSWISSENSCHAFTEN 2013
HUP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013 (Canada)
Harvard University Press eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
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Table of Contents
Frontmatter
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
General Introduction
Technical Introduction
1. A Realistic Theory of Judicial Behavior
2. The Previous Empirical Literature
3. The Supreme Court
4. The Courts of Appeals
5. The District Courts and the Selection Effect
6. Dissents and Dissent Aversion
7. The Questioning of Lawyers at Oral Argument
8. The Auditioners
Conclusion: The Way Forward
Acknowledgments
Index
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
General Introduction
Technical Introduction
1. A Realistic Theory of Judicial Behavior
2. The Previous Empirical Literature
3. The Supreme Court
4. The Courts of Appeals
5. The District Courts and the Selection Effect
6. Dissents and Dissent Aversion
7. The Questioning of Lawyers at Oral Argument
8. The Auditioners
Conclusion: The Way Forward
Acknowledgments
Index