We examine the revelation of preferences of justices whose true ideologies are not known at the moment of entering the Court but gradually become apparent through their judicial decisions. In the context of a two-period President-Senate-Court game – generalizing Moraski and Shipan (1999) –...

We model legal doctrine as an instrument of political control by higher courts over lower courts and the case outcomes they produce. We focus on the choice between determinate and indeterminate doctrines within a hierarchy of courts where political-ideological alignment between lower and higher...

Contrary to traditional wisdom, judges are not passive receivers of their agendas. Instead, many judges attempt to shape their dockets by encouraging potential litigants to bring particular cases. This encouragement takes the form of judges signaling their own positions on an issue as well as...