Conventional models of judicial behavior assume that, barring extraordinary circumstances, lower courts will comply with changes in governing law. The few studies that have examined judicial compliance with higher court decisions have concluded that judges quickly adopt even controversial new...

This paper exploits the diversity of panels at the court of appeals in the state of São Paulo to address the role of career backgrounds and ideology in shaping the response of judicial decisions to a major shift in jurisprudence on drug offenses. The Brazilian constitution reserves 80% of the...

This Article uses public choice theory and the new institutionalism to discuss the incentives, proclivities, and shared backgrounds of lawyers and judges. In America every law-making judge has a single unifying characteristic, each is a former lawyer. This shared background has powerful and...

We discuss a central question in the study of courts: What do judges want? We suggest three different domains that might serve as the basic preferences of a judge: case dispositions and rules, caseloads and case mixes, and social consequences. We emphasize preferences over dispositions on the...

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) –...

In this brief Article, I explore the growing empirical evidence in support of the public choice model of judicial decision making. Although legal scholars have traditionally been reluctant to engage in a critical inquiry into the role of judicial self-interest on judicial behavior, recent...

Policymakers and scholars repeatedly warn that frequent and persistent judicial vacancies pose one of the greatest threats to the federal judiciary by overburdening judges. Scholars, in turn, are divided as to whether pressure on judges results in more lenient punishment. Despite such concerns,...

A defendant who admits to having committed an offense may nevertheless be acquitted if he can provide a legally cognizable justification or excuse for his actions by raising an affirmative defense. This article explains how affirmative defenses generate social benefits in the form of avoided...

The "trial penalty" is a concept widely accepted by all the major actors in the criminal justice system: defendants, prosecutors, defense attorneys, court employees, and judges. The notion is that defendants receive longer sentences at trial than they would have through plea bargain, often...

Attacking Judges is the most comprehensive empirical assessment of judicial elections to date, right as judicial elections are under fevered criticism, and judicial campaign spending and attack advertising reach historical highs. Attacking Judges purports to debunk criticism of judicial...