One of the central roles of the Supreme Court is to settle controversies over social facts, but little is known about the prevalence of these rulings or the justifications for them offered by the Court. An analysis of the landmark decisions from 1900 to 2015 reveals that most include a ruling on a disputed social fact, though the Court rarely offers an explicit justification. Rulings from different ideological perspectives invoke social facts at the same rate but with distinct patterns of justification, illustrating a division in approach to this vital aspect of the Court’s work.

Presidents regularly fill judicial vacancies through promotion. However, the effect of promotion on judicial behavior has been largely unexplored. I theorize that promotion affects judicial behavior through psychological motives associated with social identity. I test this expectation by examining the decisions of promoted court of appeals judges. Promoted judges are less likely to vote to reverse, but this effect fades as appellate court experience increases. The effect is stronger when promoted judges review former colleagues. I argue that social identity theory best explains these patterns and discuss the importance of promotion and social identity for the study of judicial behavior.

Scholars sometimes refer to the civil jury decision-making process as a “black box,” because researchers cannot view juries’ interior workings. However, state institutions structure the environment in which disputes arise and determine the rules courts apply, while environmental factors condition courts’ responses to claims. This article utilizes an original data set of civil jury verdicts in five states to examine the influence of cross-state institutional variation and trial location on courts’ dispute resolution and resource allocation functions. The results indicate that institutions and trial location significantly influence patterns of winners and losers, while case-specific factors predict the amount awarded.

International law is an evolving body of jurisprudence characterized by ambiguities, gaps, and lack of precedent. I argue that the propensity of the prosecution or the defense to emerge victorious on issues on appeal will depend on the legal issues they raise. I introduce a new database on the outcomes of every extant appeal filed by both the prosecution and the defense at the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. I find that the defense is more often likely to win on appeal when it appeals issues that are dynamic and inchoate in international law.

The power of government to take private property for public use has been a frequent source of political disquiet because of the tension it creates with notions of individual rights ingrained in liberal society. The backlash against takings after Kelo offers a case in point. Existing research has focused on the public’s distaste for the taking of homes and has thus missed an important cause of the backlash: the purpose for which property is taken. I utilize a combination of experimental and observational methods to advance our understanding of this important issue, finding that purpose is crucial in shaping attitudes toward takings.

The legal brief is a primary vehicle by which lawyers seek to persuade appellate judges. Despite wide acceptance that briefs are important, empirical scholarship has yet to establish their influence on the Supreme Court or fully explore justices’ preferences regarding them. We argue that emotional language conveys a lack of credibility to justices and thereby diminishes the party’s likelihood of garnering justices’ votes. The data concur. Using an automated textual analysis program, we find that parties who employ less emotional language in their briefs are more likely to win a justice’s vote, a result that holds even after controlling for other features correlated with success, such as case quality. These findings suggest that advocates seeking to influence judges can enhance their credibility and attract justices’ votes by employing measured, objective language.

This article examines the impact of the presence of a straight-ticket voting option (STVO) on roll-off in judicial elections, including elections for state supreme courts, intermediate courts of appeals, and urban trial courts. The core hypothesis is that STVO decreases roll-off with partisan ballots but increases roll-off when nonpartisan and retention ballots are used, and these effects should be stronger for elections to less visible, lower-level courts. The analysis finds some support for the hypothesis for state supreme courts but not for the two types of lower courts. It is unclear why there is this inconsistency.

Since the passage of the 1998 Human Rights Act, popular anxiety about increasing judicial power over immigration has led to a very public debate about the future of British constitutionalism. Drawing on an analysis of case law, 747 media articles, and interviews with human rights advocates, legal scholars, and government officials, I trace the development of a popular constitutionalism in the United Kingdom, fueled by resistance to international human rights law and directed at repealing the act. I demonstrate how the tabloid media amplifies jurisprudentially insignificant cases, especially regarding “foreign criminals,” and erodes political support for the entrenchment of rights.