Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T00:24:08.842Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Strategic Opinion Language on the US Courts of Appeals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Joshua Boston
Joshua Boston*
Affiliation:
Bowling Green State University
*
Contact the author at jboston@bgsu.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What strategies do judges employ when they anticipate review? Constrained judges behave strategically by using particular instruments—like language complexity—when authoring opinions. Prior studies suggest that judges use complexity in anticipation of legislative hostility. Similarly, the threat of review and reversal may spur opinion complexity. This study examines variations in circuit court opinions resulting from precedent treatment and Supreme Court preferences. When a circuit negatively treats a Supreme Court precedent that the justices prefer or a circuit positively treats a precedent that the justices dislike, opinion complexity should increase. These hypotheses find support, suggesting that circuits strategically insulate using opinion complexity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring 2020 , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
© 2020 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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.)

Footnotes

I am sincerely thankful to James Spriggs, Lee Epstein, Matthew Gabel, Alice Sanford, Betsy Sinclair, Margit Tavits, Kevin McGuire, David Carlson, JB Duck-Mayr, Dino Hadzic, Jonathan Homola, Jae Hee Jung, Elif Ozdemir, Andrew Stone, Michelle Torres, Nicholas Waterbury, and the anonymous reviewers, among others, whose thoughtful comments have significantly improved this manuscript. Furthermore, I am grateful for the comments I received from conference discussants and attendees including Eileen Braman, Micheal Giles, Erin Lauterbach, Ali Masood, Josh Ryan, Jacqueline Sievert, Gisela Sin, Steve Wasby, and Cara Wong. I presented previous versions of this article at the 2017 Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting, the 2017 PoliInformatics Workshop, the 2018 Washington University in St. Louis–University of Illinois Student Exchange, and the 2018 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting.

References

Aldisert, R. J. 2009. Opinion Writing: Theoretical Concepts Underlying an Opinion, the Anatomy of an Opinion, Writing Style, and Opinion Writing Checklists. 2nd ed. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse.Google Scholar
Austin, P. C., and Hux, J. E. 2002. “A Brief Note on Overlapping Confidence Intervals.” Journal of Vascular Surgery 36 (1): 194–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Black, R. C., and Boyd, C. L. 2010. “US Supreme Court Agenda Setting and the Role of Litigant Status.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 28 (2): 286–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, R. C., and Boyd, C. L. 2013. “Selecting the Select Few: The Discuss List and the US Supreme Court’s Agenda-Setting Process.” Social Science Quarterly 94 (4): 1124–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, R. C., Owens, R. J., Wedeking, J., and Wohlfarth, P. C. 2016. US Supreme Court Opinions and Their Audiences. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, R. C., and Spriggs, J. F. II. 2008. “An Empirical Analysis of the Length of US Supreme Court Opinions.” Houston Law Review 45:621–82.Google Scholar
Black, R. C., Treul, S. A., Johnson, T. R., and Goldman, J. 2011. “Emotions, Oral Arguments, and Supreme Court Decision Making.” Journal of Politics 73 (2): 572–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, C. L. 2013. “She’ll Settle It?” Journal of Law and Courts 1 (2): 193–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradford, C. S. 1990. “Following Dead Precedent: The Supreme Court’s Ill-Advised Rejection of Anticipatory Overruling.” Fordham Law Review 59:39–90.Google Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, E., and Stephenson, M. 2002. “Informative Precedent and Intrajudicial Communication.” American Political Science Review 96 (4): 755–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, G. A., Wright, J. R., and Zorn, C. J. 1999. “Sophisticated Voting and Gate-Keeping in the Supreme Court.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 15 (3): 549–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, C. M., Segal, J. A., and Songer, D. 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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corley, P. C. 2008. “The Supreme Court and Opinion Content: The Influence of Parties’ Briefs.” Political Research Quarterly 61 (3): 468–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corley, P. C., Collins, P. M., and Calvin, B. 2011. “Lower Court Influence on US Supreme Court Opinion Content.” Journal of Politics 73 (1): 31–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corley, P. C., and Wedeking, J. 2014. “The (Dis)advantage of Certainty: The Importance of Certainty in Language.” Law and Society Review 48 (1): 35–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cross, F. B. 2003. “Decisionmaking in the US Circuit Courts of Appeals.” California Law Review 91:1457–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cross, F. B., and Tiller, E. H. 1998. “Judicial Partisanship and Obedience to Legal Doctrine: Whistle-Blowing on the Federal Courts of Appeals.” Yale Law Journal 107 (7): 2155–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, L., Martin, A. D., Segal, J. A., and Westerland, C. 2007. “The Judicial Common Space.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 23 (2): 303–25.Google Scholar
Hansford, T. G., and Spriggs, J. F. 2006. The Politics of Precedent on the US Supreme Court. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansford, T. G., Spriggs, J. F., and Stenger, A. A. 2013. “The Information Dynamics of Vertical Stare Decisis.” Journal of Politics 75 (4): 894–906.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinkle, R. K. 2016. “Strategic Anticipation of En Banc Review in the US Courts of Appeals.” Law and Society Review 50 (2): 383–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaiser, H. F. 1960. “The Application of Electronic Computers to Factor Analysis.” Educational and Psychological Measurement 20 (1): 141–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kastellec, J. P. 2007. “Panel Composition and Judicial Compliance on the US Courts of Appeals.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 23 (2): 421–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kastellec, J. P. 2011. “Hierarchical and Collegial Politics on the US Courts of Appeals.” Journal of Politics 73 (2): 345–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, D. E., and Hume, R. J. 2003. “Fear of Reversal as an Explanation of Lower Court Compliance.” Law and Society Review 37 (3): 579–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, J., and Epstein, L. 1996. “The Norm of Stare Decisis.” American Journal of Political Science 40:1018–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lax, J. R. 2003. “Certiorari and Compliance in the Judicial Hierarchy: Discretion, Reputation, and the Rule of Four.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 15 (1): 61–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, A. D., and Quinn, K. M. 2002. “Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the US Supreme Court, 1953–1999.” Political Analysis 10 (2): 134–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owens, R. J., and Wedeking, J. P. 2011. “Justices and Legal Clarity: Analyzing the Complexity of US Supreme Court Opinions.” Law and Society Review 45 (4): 1027–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owens, R. J., and Wedeking, J. P. 2012. “Predicting Drift on Politically Insulated Institutions: A Study of Ideological Drift on the United States Supreme Court.” Journal of Politics 74 (2): 487–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owens, R. J., Wedeking, J., and Wohlfarth, P. C. 2013. “How the Supreme Court Alters Opinion Language to Evade Congressional Review.” Journal of Law and Courts 1 (1): 35–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pennebaker, J. W., Booth, R. J., and Francis, M. E. 2007. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count: LIWC. Computer software.Google Scholar
Schuck, P. H., and Elliott, E. D. 1990. “To the Chevron Station: An Empirical Study of Federal Administrative Law.” Duke Law Journal 1990 (5): 984–1077.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siegelman, P., and Donohue, J. J. 1990. “Studying the Iceberg from Its Tip: A Comparison of Published and Unpublished Employment Discrimination Cases.” Law and Society Review 24 (5): 1133–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, J. L., and Tiller, E. H. 2002. “The Strategy of Judging: Evidence from Administrative Law.” Journal of Legal Studies 31 (1): 61–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Songer, D. R., Segal, J. A., and Cameron, C. M. 1994. “The Hierarchy of Justice: Testing a Principal-Agent Model of Supreme Court–Circuit Court Interactions.” American Journal of Political Science 38 (3): 673–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spaeth, Harold J., Epstein, Lee, Martin, Andrew D., Segal, Jeffrey A., Ruger, Theodore J., and Benesh, Sara C. 2017. Supreme Court Database, Version 2018 Release 02. http://Supremecourtdatabase.org.Google Scholar
Spriggs, J. F. 1996. “The Supreme Court and Federal Administrative Agencies: A Resource-Based Theory and Analysis of Judicial Impact.” American Journal of Political Science 40 (4): 1122–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spriggs, J. F. 1997. “Explaining Federal Bureaucratic Compliance with Supreme Court Opinions.” Political Research Quarterly 50 (3): 567–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staton, J. K., and Vanberg, G. 2008. “The Value of Vagueness: Delegation, Defiance, and Judicial Opinions.” American Journal of Political Science 52 (3): 504–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tausczik, Y. R., and Pennebaker, J. W. 2010. “The Psychological Meaning of Words: LIWC and Computerized Text Analysis Methods.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 29 (1): 24–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tetlock, P. E., Bernzweig, J., and Gallant, J. L. 1985. “Supreme Court Decision Making: Cognitive Style as a Predictor of Ideological Consistency of Voting.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48 (5): 1227–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tiller, E. H., and Spiller, P. T. 1999. “Strategic Instruments: Legal Structure and Political Games in Administrative Law.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 15 (2): 349–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United States Courts. 2019. Caseload Statistics Data Tables. http://www.uscourts.gov/statistics-reports/caseload-statistics-data-tables.Google Scholar
Westerland, C., Segal, J. A., Epstein, L., Cameron, C. M., and Comparato, S. 2010. “Strategic Defiance and Compliance in the US Courts of Appeals.” American Journal of Political Science 54 (4): 891–905.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Boston supplementary material
Download undefined(File)
File 433.5 KB