IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlstud/doi10.1086-660839.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Law Matter? Theory and Evidence from Single-Subject Adjudication

Author

Listed:
  • Michael D. Gilbert

Abstract

Empirical studies have examined the effects of law and politics on judicial decision making, but many legal scholars are dissatisfied with how these studies account for law. This paper provides a novel survey technique for measuring law. I demonstrate this technique by examining judicial decision making in cases involving the single-subject rule. The rule limits ballot propositions to one "subject," a standard that vests judges with some discretion. Measures of law developed with the surveys strongly predict judges' votes in single-subject cases. Moving from the proposition in the sample with the lowest subject count to the one with the highest is associated with a 78-percentage-point increase in the likelihood of a judge finding a violation of the rule. Measures of ideology also predict judges' votes, especially when propositions are politically salient and when the law is indeterminate.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael D. Gilbert, 2011. "Does Law Matter? Theory and Evidence from Single-Subject Adjudication," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 40(2), pages 333-365.
  • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:doi:10.1086/660839
    DOI: 10.1086/660839
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/660839
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/660839
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/660839?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bartels, Brandon L., 2009. "The Constraining Capacity of Legal Doctrine on the U.S. Supreme Court," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 103(3), pages 474-495, August.
    2. A. Colin Cameron & Jonah B. Gelbach & Douglas L. Miller, 2011. "Robust Inference With Multiway Clustering," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 238-249, April.
    3. Joshua D. Angrist & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2009. "Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 8769.
    4. Ashenfelter, Orley & Eisenberg, Theodore & Schwab, Stewart J, 1995. "Politics and the Judiciary: The Influence of Judicial Background on Case Outcomes," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(2), pages 257-281, June.
    5. Ai, Chunrong & Norton, Edward C., 2003. "Interaction terms in logit and probit models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 123-129, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chen, Daniel L. & Frankenreiter, Jens & Yeh, Susan, 2016. "Judicial Compliance in District Courts," TSE Working Papers 16-715, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    2. Chen, Daniel L., 2023. "Judicial compliance in district courts," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nicola Lacetera & Mario Macis & Robert Slonim, 2014. "Rewarding Volunteers: A Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(5), pages 1107-1129, May.
    2. Cuong Viet Nguyen & Finn Tarp, 2023. "Cash Transfers and Labor Supply: New Evidence on Impacts and Mechanisms," DERG working paper series 23-18, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Development Economics Research Group (DERG).
    3. Olayinka Oyekola & Olapeju C. Ogunmokun & Martha A. Omolo & Samuel Odewunmi, 2023. "Gender, Legal Origin, and Accounting Disclosure: Evidence from More Than 140,000 Firms," Discussion Papers 2313, University of Exeter, Department of Economics.
    4. Trevor Young-Hyman & Adam M. Kleinbaum, 2020. "Meso-Foundations of Interorganizational Relationships: How Team Power Structures Shape Partner Novelty," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(6), pages 1385-1407, November.
    5. Button, Patrick & Walker, Brigham, 2020. "Employment discrimination against Indigenous Peoples in the United States: Evidence from a field experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    6. Caballero, Julián, 2021. "Corporate dollar debt and depreciations: All’s well that ends well?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    7. Sedova, Barbora & Kalkuhl, Matthias, 2020. "Who are the climate migrants and where do they go? Evidence from rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    8. Bautista, María Angélica & González, Felipe & Martinez, Luis R. & Muñoz, Pablo & Prem, Mounu, 2020. "Does Higher Education Reduce Mortality? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Chile," SocArXiv 5s2px, Center for Open Science.
    9. Denis Cogneau & Yannick Dupraz, 2014. "Questionable Inference on the Power of Pre-Colonial Institutions in Africa," PSE Working Papers halshs-01018548, HAL.
    10. Baccini, Leonardo & Impullitti, Giammario & Malesky, Edmund J., 2019. "Globalization and state capitalism: Assessing Vietnam's accession to the WTO," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 75-92.
    11. Tucker, C.E., 2012. "Institutions, competition and regulation : Intellectual property and innovation," Discussion Paper 2012-030, Tilburg University, Tilburg Law and Economic Center.
    12. Marco Celentani & Miguel García-Posada & Fernando Gómez Pomar, 2022. "Fresh start policies and small business activity: evidence from a natural experiment," Working Papers 2210, Banco de España.
    13. Philippe Martin & Thierry Mayer & Mathias Thoenig, 2012. "The Geography of Conflicts and Regional Trade Agreements," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(4), pages 1-35, October.
    14. Eisenkopf, Gerald & Hessami, Zohal & Fischbacher, Urs & Ursprung, Heinrich W., 2015. "Academic performance and single-sex schooling: Evidence from a natural experiment in Switzerland," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 123-143.
    15. Marcelo Moreira & Geert Ridder, 2019. "Efficiency loss of asymptotically efficient tests in an instrumental variables regression," CeMMAP working papers CWP03/19, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    16. Susana Ferreira & Mirko Moro, 2013. "Income and Preferences for the Environment: Evidence from Subjective Well-Being Data," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(3), pages 650-667, March.
    17. aus dem Moore, Jan Peter & Spitz-Oener, Alexandra, 2012. "Bye bye, GI: The impact of the US military drawdown on local German labor markets," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2012-024, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    18. Aldo Rustichini & Alexander Vostroknutov, 2014. "Merit and Justice: An Experimental Analysis of Attitude to Inequality," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(12), pages 1-19, December.
    19. Brox, Enzo & Krieger, Tommy, 2022. "Birthplace diversity and team performance," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    20. Gershenson, Seth, 2013. "The causal effect of commute time on labor supply: Evidence from a natural experiment involving substitute teachers," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 127-140.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:doi:10.1086/660839. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.