Craig F. Emmert

Expanding the integrated model of judicial decision making: The california justices and capital punishment

This study of the death penalty decisions made by justices of the California Supreme Court between 1979 and 1990 elaborates on the integrated model used to explain judicial behavior. Specifically, the interactive effects of judicial ideology, case characteristics, the political environment, the dynamic effects of legal issues, and the effects of retention elections are explored. The model does provide a useful explanation of judicial behavior. In addition, this study indicates that the effects of legal arguments and case facts are conditioned by judicial ideology, that the effects of legal issues change over time, and that electoral pressures do not have a uniform effect across judges.

An Integrated Case-Related Model of Judicial Decision Making: Explaining State Supreme Court Decisions in Judicial Review Cases

Employing data from more than three thousand state supreme court judicial review cases, I construct and test an integrated case-related model of judicial decision making. Logit analysis reveals that the type of issue raised, the identity of the challenging party, the constitutional arguments advanced, the centrality of the constitutional challenge, and the lower court ruling on constitutionality all have an independent impact on state supreme court decisions in judicial review cases. The findings clearly provide support for the notion that more complex theoretical and methodological approaches provide a more complete explanation of judicial decision making.

The Disbursement Pattern of Japanese Foreign Aid: A Reappraisal

Three perspectives on the determinants of Japans official development assistance (ODA) program are often represented as distinct, valid explanations of the aid program. Yet few studies have attempted to simultaneously test the hypotheses generated from all three perspectives in a global study of Japanese aid flows. This study seeks to improve the understanding of the Japanese ODA program by addressing some of the gaps in the existing literature. Providing a comprehensive analysis, the article investigates the effects of different political and economic variables on Japanese aid disbursement in eighty-six countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East from 1979 to 2002. The findings of the study make several contributions to the literature. First, the results provide strong support for the claim that humanitarian concerns, as measured by poverty and human rights conditions in recipient countries, are important determinants of aid allocation. Second, although much of the previous literature has hypothesized that Japans aid program seeks to promote Japans economic interests, little empirical support for this view is found in the present study. Likewise, the disbursement pattern of ODA was associated with only a limited number of US security interests; US economic interests are shown to have no effect on ODA.

Explaining Japanese aid policy in Latin America: A test of competing theories

This article attempts to explain the variation in Japanese official development assistance in eighteen Latin American countries for the period 1979 to 1993. The findings suggest that recipient need and some Japanese economic interests have influenced disbursements in the region. The study does not provide support for theories that claim that U.S. strategic and economic interests are important determinants of Japanese ODA decisions.

Law Enforcement Recruit Training at the State Level: An Evaluation

Statewide recruit training programs supplement agency training by providing equal access for all law enforcement personnel to the latest methods and technologies and by increasing the likelihood of uniform practices across diverse communities. This study is based on an assessment survey of local, county, and state law enforcement agency recruits who participated in the South Dakota Law Enforcement Training Basic Certification Course from 1996 to 1998. Recruit evaluations of training in the areas of criminal procedure, traffic control, and nontraditional police responsibilities were assessed. Evaluations of training in criminal procedure were highest, followed by assessments of training in traffic control. Recruits rated their training in nontraditional areas of police work lowest of all. A multivariate analysis of factors explaining their evaluations indicated that recruits from larger departments were less positive in evaluations of their training. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for law enforcement training and training evaluation.

Citizen-Initiated Contacting A Multivariate Analysis

One major way citizens interact with local government is through individual contacts with public officials. Applying multivariate analysis to data from a 1985 study of three Florida cities, the authors find that need (defined as perceptions of government mis- or inaction) and awareness of whom to contact best explains contacting by people who clearly attach no larger social significance to their acts (particularized-referent contactors). On the other hand, social-referent contactors (those who see their contacts as affecting both themselves and others) are more likely to be people with both higher socioeconomic status and a greater sense of need.

Voting in the Glare of the Spotlight: Representatives' Votes on the Impeachment of President Clinton

We seek to understand the strategies employed by members of the House of Representatives in balancing their partisan and ideological goals with their desire for re-election in voting on whether or not to hold impeachment hearings regarding President Bill Clinton and, ultimately, whether or not to approve articles of impeachment against him. Our major finding is that electoral considerations apparently had a greater impact on the October, 1998, vote on holding impeachment hearings than on the actual impeachment votes two months later. We suggest that this counterintuitive finding may be caused by the differences between where the votes fell on the election cycle. We also uncover evidence that certain members made strategic decisions in voting on each of the four articles of impeachment recommended by the House Judiciary Committee. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the study of congressional voting behavior.

Litigants in State Supreme Court Judicial Review Cases: Participation and Success

This study examines the role of litigants as initiators of judicial policy in state supreme court judicial review cases. It also provides a test of the “party capability” theory, employing data from over 3000 cases decided in state supreme courts between 1981 and 1985. Major findings are that criminal defendants challenge laws more frequently than other types of parties, but that they are far less successful than others in persuading state supreme courts to declare laws unconstitutional. Governmental parties are most successful, but there are only minimal success rate differences among political groups, individuals, and business and professional litigants.

Bans on Executing the Mentally Retarded: An Event History Analysis of State Policy Adoption

ON JUNE 20, 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that executing mentally retarded murderers violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment (Lane 2002). The court reversed its 1989 decision in Penry v. Lynaugh in which it held that the Constitution did not per se prohibit execution of the mentally retarded. The justices noted at that time that only two states prohibited the execution of mentally retarded criminals. By 2002, however, a total of 18 death penalty states had enacted laws to ban the practice. The Atkins majority found that the clear direction of state policy change indicated the existence of a national consensus against executing mentally retarded offenders. In this study, we seek to explain state lawmakers’ decisions to adopt bans on execution of the mentally retarded, from Georgia’s initial adoption in 1988 to the court’s decision in the Atkins case. The findings shed light on both an important aspect of death penalty policy and the politics of state policy adoption. The death penalty has been defined as a morality policy. We discuss studies of policy enactment in this area and outline the two major theories of state policy adoption (e.g., Haider-Markel 2001; Haider-Markel and Meier 1996; Meier 1994; Mooney 2001; Bans on Executing the Mentally Retarded: An Event History Analysis of State Policy Adoption