Hostname: page-component-5db58dd55d-bthnr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-06-17T06:58:45.727Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Precedent and Doctrine in a Complicated World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

STEVEN CALLANDER  and
TOM S. CLARK
STEVEN CALLANDER*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
TOM S. CLARK*
Affiliation:
Emory University
*
Steven Callander is Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management, Professor of Political Economy, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University (sjc@stanford.edu).
Tom S. Clark is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, Emory University (tom.clark@emory.edu).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Courts resolve individual disputes and create principles of law to justify their decisions and guide the resolution of future cases. Those tasks present informational challenges that affect the whole judicial process. Judges must simultaneously learn about (1) the particular facts and legal implications of any dispute; (2) discover the doctrine that appropriately resolves the dispute; and (3) attempt to articulate those rules in the context of a single case so that future courts may reason from past cases. We propose a model of judicial learning and decision making in which there is a complicated relationship between facts and legal outcomes. The model has implications for many of the important questions in the judicial process, including the dynamics of common law development, the path-dependent nature of the law, and optimal case selection by supervisory courts.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 111 , Issue 1 , February 2017 , pp. 184 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2017 

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

We thank Deborah Beim, Chuck Cameron, Jeff Staton, and seminar participants at Penn State, Princeton, UNSW, Stanford GSB, the Public Choice Conference, the Law and Economics Theory Conference, and the referees and editor of this journal, for helpful suggestions and comments.

References

Baker, Scott, and Mezzetti, Claudio. 2012. “A Theory of Rational Jurisprudence.” Journal of Political Economy 120 (3): 513–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beim, Deborah. 2015. “Learning in the Judicial Hierarchy.” Yale University working paper.Google Scholar
Beim, Deborah, Hirsch, Alexander V., and Kastellec, Jonathan P.. 2014. “Whistleblowing and Compliance in the Judicial Hierarchy.” American Journal of Political Science 58 (4): 904–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Ethan, and Stephenson, Matthew. 2002. “Informative Precedent and Intrajudicial Communication.” American Political Science Review 96 (4): 755–66.Google Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A., and Wright, John R.. 1988. “Organized Interests and Agenda Setting in the U.S. Supreme Court.” The American Political Science Review 82 (4): 1109–27.Google Scholar
Callander, Steven. 2008. “A Theory of Policy Expertise.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 3 (2): 123–40.Google Scholar
Callander, Steven. 2011. “Searching for Good Policies.” American Political Science Review 105 (4): 643–62.Google Scholar
Cameron, Charles M. 1993. “New Avenues for Modeling Judicial Politics.” Prepared for delivery at the Conference on the Political Economy of Public Law, Rochester, NY.Google Scholar
Cameron, Charles M., Segal, Jeffrey A., and Songer, Donald R.. 2000. “Strategic Auditing in a Political Hierarchy: An Informational Model of the Supreme Court’s Certiorari Decisions.” American Political Science Review 94 (1): 101–16.Google Scholar
Carrubba, Clifford J., and Clark, Tom S.. 2012. “Rule Creation in a Political Hierarchy.” American Political Science Review 106 (3): 622–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Tom S. 2016. “Scope and Precedent: Judicial Rule-Making Under Uncertainty.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 28 (3): 353–84.Google Scholar
Clark, Tom S., and Kastellec, Jonathan P.. 2013. “The Supreme Court and Percolation in the Lower Courts: An Optimal Stopping Model.” Journal of Politics 75 (1): 150–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cross, Frank B. 1997. “Political Science and the New Legal Realism: A Case of Unfortunate Interdisciplinary Ignorance.” Northwestern University Law Review 92 (1): 251–326.Google Scholar
Cross, Frank B. 2003. “Decisionmaking in the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals.” California Law Review 91 (6): 1457–515.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1986. Law’s Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ellison, Glenn, and Holden, Richard. 2014. “A Theory of Rule Development.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations 30 (4): 649–82.Google Scholar
Feals, Jennifer. 2014. “Maine’s highest court agrees to hear new arguments in case of public access to private Kennebunkport beach.” https://bangordailynews.com/2014/03/05/news/portland/maines-highest-court-agrees-to-hear-new-arguments-in-case-of-public-access-to-private-kennebunkport-beach/ Google Scholar
Fox, Justin, and Vanberg, Georg. 2014. “Narrow versus Broad Judicial Decisions.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 26 (3): 355–83.Google Scholar
Friedman, Barry. 2006. “Taking Law Seriously.” Perspectives on Politics 4 (2): 261–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gailmard, Sean, and Patty, John W.. 2013. Learning While Governing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gennaioli, Nicola, and Shleifer, Andrei. 2007. “The Evolution of Common Law.” Journal of Political Economy 115 (1): 43–68.Google Scholar
Hume, David. 1748. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Jordan, Stuart. N.d. “Policymaking by Rules and Cases.” University of Rochester working paper.Google Scholar
Kastellec, Jonathan P., and Lax, Jeffrey R.. 2008. “Case Selection and the Study of Judicial Politics.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 5 (3): 407–46.Google Scholar
Kornhauser, Lewis. A. 1992 a. “Modeling Collegial Courts I: Path-Dependence.” International Review of Law and Economics 12 (2): 169–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kornhauser, Lewis A. 1992 b. “Modeling Collegial Courts II: Legal Doctrine.” Journal of Law Economics & Organization 8 (3): 441–70.Google Scholar
Kornhauser, Lewis A. 1995. “Adjudication by a Resource-Constrained Team: Hierarchy and Precedent in a Judicial System.” Southern California Law Review 68: 1605–29.Google Scholar
Kritzer, Herbert M., and Richards, Mark J.. 2002. “Deciding the Supreme Court’s Administrative Law Cases: Does Chevron Matter?” Paper prepared for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, MA.Google Scholar
Lax, Jeffrey R. 2007. “Constructing Legal Rules on Appellate Courts.” American Political Science Review. 101 (3): 591–604.Google Scholar
Lax, Jeffrey R. 2011. “The New Judicial Politics of Legal Doctrine.” Annual Review of Political Science 14: 131–57.Google Scholar
Lax, Jeffrey R. 2012. “Political Constriants on Legal Doctrine: How Hierarchy Shapes the Law.” Journal of Politics 74 (3): 765–81.Google Scholar
Lax, Jeffrey R., and Rader, Kelly T.. 2010. “Legal Constraints on Supreme Court Decision Making: Do Jurisprudential Regimes Exist?” Journal of Politics 72 (2): 273–84.Google Scholar
Levi, Edward. 1949. An Introduction to Legal Reasoning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McGuire, Kevin T. 1994. “Amici Curiae and Strategies for Gaining Access to the Supreme Court.” Political Research Quarterly 47 (4): 821–37.Google Scholar
Perry, H. W. Jr. 1991. Deciding to Decide: Agenda Setting in the United States Supreme Court. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1934. The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest and the Business Cycle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sherwin, Emily. 1999. “A Defense of Analogical Reasoning in Law.” University of Chicago Law Review 66 (4): 1179–97.Google Scholar
Staton, Jeffrey K., and Vanberg, Georg. 2008. “The Value of Vagueness: Delegation, Defiance, and Judicial Opinions.” American Journal of Political Science 52 (3): 504–19.Google Scholar
Stein, Peter G. 1992. “Symposium: Relationships Among Roman Law, Common Law, and Civil Law.” Tulane Law Review 66: 1591–603.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Kathleen M. 1992. “The Supreme Court, 1991 Term – Foreword: The Justices of Rules and Standards.” Harvard Law Review 106 (1): 22–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunstein, Cass R. 1993. “On Analogical Reasoning.” Harvard Law Review 106 (3): 741–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunstein, Cass R. 1999. One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ulmer, S. Sidney. 1972. “The Decision to Grant Certiorari as an Indicator to Decision ‘On the Merits’.” Polity 4 (4): 429–47.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.