IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp12317.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Vote Influence in Group Decision-Making: The Changing Role of Justices' Peers on the Supreme Court

Author

Listed:
  • Mindock, Maxwell R.

    (University of Oregon)

  • Waddell, Glen R.

    (University of Oregon)

Abstract

We consider the voting behavior of Supreme Court Justices, finding evidence of co-dependencies in their votes. Coincident with changes in the party imbalance of the Court over time, sharp discontinuities in these dependencies are evident. Overall, the patterns suggest a tradeoff between co-dependencies around political affiliations and individual ideologies, with more-equal party representation on the Court encouraging greater party awareness in Justice voting, and less-equal party representation allowing Justices across party lines but with similar ideologies to inform each other's votes.

Suggested Citation

  • Mindock, Maxwell R. & Waddell, Glen R., 2019. "Vote Influence in Group Decision-Making: The Changing Role of Justices' Peers on the Supreme Court," IZA Discussion Papers 12317, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12317
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp12317.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gilat Levy, 2007. "Decision Making in Committees: Transparency, Reputation, and Voting Rules," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 150-168, March.
    2. Daniel Martin Katz & Michael J Bommarito II & Josh Blackman, 2017. "A general approach for predicting the behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(4), pages 1-18, April.
    3. Anna Harvey & Michael J. Woodruff, 2013. "Confirmation Bias in the United States Supreme Court Judicial Database," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(2), pages 414-460, April.
    4. Adam Bonica & Maya Sen, 2017. "The Politics of Selecting the Bench from the Bar: The Legal Profession and Partisan Incentives to Introduce Ideology into Judicial Selection," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(4), pages 559-595.
    5. Michael A. Bailey, 2007. "Comparable Preference Estimates across Time and Institutions for the Court, Congress, and Presidency," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(3), pages 433-448, July.
    6. Bonica, Adam & Chilton, Adam S. & Sen, Maya, 2015. "The Political Ideologies of American Lawyers," Working Paper Series 15-049, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    7. Ozkan Eren & Naci Mocan, 2018. "Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 171-205, July.
    8. Hao Li & Sherwin Rosen & Wing Suen, 2001. "Conflicts and Common Interests in Committees," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1478-1497, December.
    9. Ottaviani, Marco & Sorensen, Peter, 2001. "Information aggregation in debate: who should speak first?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(3), pages 393-421, September.
    10. Nikolaj Harmon & Raymond Fisman & Emir Kamenica, 2019. "Peer Effects in Legislative Voting," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 156-180, October.
    11. Martin, Andrew D. & Quinn, Kevin M., 2002. "Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 134-153, April.
    12. Adam Bonica, 2014. "Mapping the Ideological Marketplace," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 58(2), pages 367-386, April.
    13. Kelejian, Harry H & Prucha, Ingmar R, 1998. "A Generalized Spatial Two-Stage Least Squares Procedure for Estimating a Spatial Autoregressive Model with Autoregressive Disturbances," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 99-121, July.
    14. Carlos Berdejó & Daniel L. Chen, 2017. "Electoral Cycles among US Courts of Appeals Judges," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(3), pages 479-496.
    15. B. Chupp, 2014. "Political interaction in the senate: estimating a political “spatial” weights matrix and an application to lobbying behavior," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 160(3), pages 521-538, September.
    16. Chad Westerland, 2007. "The Judicial Common Space 1," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(2), pages 303-325, June.
    17. Alma Cohen & Crystal S. Yang, 2019. "Judicial Politics and Sentencing Decisions," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 160-191, February.
    18. Caldeira, Gregory A & Wright, John R & Zorn, Christopher J W, 1999. "Sophisticated Voting and Gate-Keeping in the Supreme Court," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(3), pages 549-572, October.
    19. Segal, Jeffrey A. & Cover, Albert D., 1989. "Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(2), pages 557-565, June.
    20. Bonica, Adam & Sen, Maya, 2017. "The Politics of Selecting the Bench from the Bar: The Legal Profession and Partisan Incentives to Introduce Ideology into Judicial Selection," Working Paper Series rwp17-048, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Bonica, Adam & Chilton, Adam S. & Goldin, Jacob & Rozema, Kyle & Sen, Maya, 2016. "Measuring Judicial Ideology Using Law Clerk Hiring," Working Paper Series 16-031, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    2. Spruk, Rok & Kovac, Mitja, 2019. "Replicating and extending Martin-Quinn scores," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    3. Sarel, Roee & Demirtas, Melanie, 2021. "Delegation in a multi-tier court system: Are remands in the U.S. federal courts driven by moral hazard?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    4. Joshua B. Fischman, 2015. "Do the Justices Vote Like Policy Makers? Evidence from Scaling the Supreme Court with Interest Groups," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(S1), pages 269-293.
    5. Giansiracusa, Noah & Ricciardi, Cameron, 2019. "Computational geometry and the U.S. Supreme Court," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 1-9.
    6. Simone Bertoli & Morgane Laouenan & Jérôme Valette, 2022. "Border Apprehensions and Federal Sentencing of Hispanic Citizens in the United States," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03818735, HAL.
    7. Richard Holden & Michael Keane & Matthew Lilley, 2021. "Peer effects on the United States Supreme Court," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(3), pages 981-1019, July.
    8. Bonica, Adam & Chilton, Adam S. & Sen, Maya, 2015. "The Political Ideologies of American Lawyers," Working Paper Series 15-049, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    9. Lerner, Joshua Y. & McCubbins, Mathew D. & Renberg, Kristen M., 2021. "The efficacy of measuring judicial ideal points: The mis-analogy of IRTs," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    10. Blanes i Vidal, Jordi & Möller, Marc, 2013. "Decision-making and implementation in teams," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 51544, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Niblett, Anthony & Yoon, Albert H., 2015. "Judicial disharmony: A study of dissent," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 60-71.
    12. Chen, Daniel L. & Philippe, Arnaud, 2023. "Clash of norms judicial leniency on defendant birthdays," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 324-344.
    13. Ryan J. Owens, 2010. "The Separation of Powers and Supreme Court Agenda Setting," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(2), pages 412-427, April.
    14. Xiaohong Yu & Zhaoyang Sun, 2022. "The company they keep: When and why Chinese judges engage in collegiality," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(4), pages 936-1002, December.
    15. Arthur Dyevre & Nicolas Lampach, 2021. "Issue attention on international courts: Evidence from the European Court of Justice," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 793-815, October.
    16. Keren Weinshall‐Margel, 2011. "Attitudinal and Neo‐Institutional Models of Supreme Court Decision Making: An Empirical and Comparative Perspective from Israel," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(3), pages 556-586, September.
    17. Samantha Bielen & Peter Grajzl, 2021. "Prosecution or Persecution? Extraneous Events and Prosecutorial Decisions," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(4), pages 765-800, December.
    18. Chan, Jimmy & Gupta, Seher & Li, Fei & Wang, Yun, 2019. "Pivotal persuasion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 178-202.
      • Jimmy Chan & Seher Gupta & Fei Li & Yun Wang, 2018. "Pivotal Persuasion," Working Papers 2018-11-03, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University.
    19. Nathan Canen & Ko Sugiura, 2022. "Inference in Linear Dyadic Data Models with Network Spillovers," Papers 2203.03497, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2023.
    20. Liu, Yaozhou Franklin & Sanyal, Amal, 2012. "When second opinions hurt: A model of expert advice under career concerns," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 1-16.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Supreme Court; voting; judicial behavior; spatial econometrics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process
    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iza:izadps:dp12317. 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    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.