Charles A. Johnson

Lower Court Reactions to Supreme Court Decisions: A Quantitative Examination

This article tests the widely assumed proposition that the greater the original support for a decision at the Supreme Court level, the greater the subsequent compliance with that decision by the lower courts. Five indicators of support were used in the analysis-size of the voting majority, size of the opinion majority, number of dissenting justices, number of dissenting opinions, and author of the majority opinion. Indexes of compliance, evasion, and discord based on Shepards Citations listings of lower court reactions to 1961-1963 Supreme Court decisions from 1963 to 1967 were used as measures of lower court responses to Supreme Court decisions. The analysis failed to support any of the hypothesized relationships.

Stage D1 prostate carcinoma. The histologic appearance of nodal metastases and its relationship to survival.

Eighty‐two of 307 consecutive staging lymphadenectomies had nodal metastases (Stage D1 prostate carcinoma). Seventy‐seven of the 82 cases had at least a 5‐year follow‐up and 50 had at least a 10‐year follow‐up. Three of these 77 cases had Grade 1 (well‐differentiated) metastases, 59 (77%) had Grade 2‐3 (moderately differentiated) metastases, and 15 (19%) had Grade 4 (poorly differentiated) metastases (M. D. Anderson Hospital [MDAH] grading system). The patients with moderately differentiated metastases had 5‐year and 10‐year survival rates of 79% and 34%, respectively, whereas the patients with poorly differentiated metastases had 5‐year and 10‐year survival rates of 13% and 0%, respectively (P < 0.0001). This study demonstrates a statistically significant difference between the prognosis of Stage D1 patients with moderately differentiated metastases and Stage D1 patients with poorly differentiated metastases. Consequently, the evaluation of the histologic appearance of Stage D1 metastases may be of clinical importance.

Content-Analytic Techniques and Judicial Research

Content analysis is used widely by judicial scholars to classify judicial decisions and opinions. Unfortunately, much of the existing research either ignores or is insensitive to the demands of this methodology, resulting in findings based on potentially faulty data. Content analysis techniques and standards are discussed in this article which would likely produce highly reliable data. A case study involving U.S. Supreme Court decisions is also presented to demonstrate these techniques and to discuss options for researchers when less than fully reliable data are produced.

JUDICIAL DECISIONS AND ORGANIZATION CHANGE: SOME THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL NOTES ON STATE COURT DECISIONS AND STATE ADMINISTRATIVE

This article reports on research evaluating the impact of five Pennsylvania Supreme Court decisions on five Pennsylvania state agencies. Rational choice theory is used to explain several different responses to the judicial decisions: (1) initiating a search for more information, (2) conducting an extensive search, and (3) complying with the court decision and degree of compliance. The analysis demonstrates that the decision to initiate a search depended upon the agencys interpretation of the judicial decision as adverse. The extent of the search was related to the enforcement possibilities. The degree of compliance differed according to whether the agency viewed the decision as adverse and what resources the agency had at its disposal. In general, all of the agencies failed to comply actively with the state court decisions.

Developing Effective University-Community Collaboration Through Grantwriting

America’s research universities, having become institutions of specialized knowledge creation, are now being called upon to change direction, to pull specialized knowledge out of the labs and lecture halls and translate it into know-how. As pointed out by Daniel Yankelovich, “For years, our institutions of higher education had remained exempt from these [public] criticisms” (Walshok, 1994), and leaders in higher education were unprepared to respond to what the public claimed was wasteful, self-serving and indulgent behavior on the part of research universities.

Policy implementation and responsiveness in nongovernmental institutions: hospital abortion services after Roe v. Wade.

O NE OF THE fundamental values of democratic societies is that institutions ought to be responsive to popular preferences. A great deal of social science research has focused on the problem of institutional responsiveness: Are institutions responsive to popular preferences? What institutional mechanisms facilitate a linkage between public policy and popular preferences? Under what circumstances do popular preferences influence policy formation and implementation? The abortion issue presents a curious problem in the study of responsiveness. The 1973 Supreme Court abortion decision (Roe v. Wade, 1973) established a national policy recognizing the right of a woman to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, and restricting the power of government to prohibit abortions during the first two trimesters of pregnancy. However, the implementation of the policy in local communities rests not with government, but with medical organizations such as hospitals. Although hospitals are now free to respond to community preferences on the abortion issue, they lack most of the institutional mechanisms that create an incentive to be responsive. Moreover, because previous health policy research finds that hospitals are closed systems, one would expect decisions about the provision of abortion services to be determined more by internal, professional preferences than by community needs or consumer demands (Krause, 1977; Alford, 1972, 1975; Reinhardt, 1973; Rayack, 1967). Nonetheless, the substantial variation in the provision of abortion services across communities suggests that some hospitals may be responsive to community preferences. This paper seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the linkage between policy implementation and community preferences by analyzing hospital abortion policies after Roe v. Wade (1973). Two questions guide the study: (1) To what extent are hospital abortion policies responsive to community preferences? (2) What community and organizational variables influence hospital responsiveness to community preferences on this health issue?