Jeff Yates

Politics and State Punitiveness in Black and White

Recent findings from the literature on imprisonment policy suggest that in addition to traditional social and economic variables, imprisonment rates are also strongly related to changes in the state political environment. In this study, we extend this literature by testing a theory of state punitiveness which posits that (1) the political environment of states influences the degree to which they incarcerate their citizens, and (2) the political determinants of state punitiveness may be conditional upon the racial subpopulation being incarcerated. Our results suggest that increases in state political conservatism in recent decades have contributed to increases in both the growth in black imprisonment rates and black imprisonment disparity (relative to whites), but that these effects are, to a degree, tempered by countervailing political conditions.

The elderly and prison policy.

The article addresses problems and concerns related to the upturn of elderly prisoners in recent years. The authors address end-of-life care in prison and the effect of sentencing guidelines on inmate populations among other concerns.

The Politics of Torts: Explaining Litigation Rates in the American States

Debate rages over whether Americans have become enormously litigious, but little research considers why Americans file cases in the first place or adequately considers rates of litigation over time. This article examines tort filings in ten representative states over a 20–year period and analyzes the impact of social, political, policy, and legal system factors that may account for case filings. We find that filing rates vary substantially over time within individual states, which adds to cautions about claims of general litigiousness. Our analysis also demonstrates that social complexity, opportunities for political participation, and social policy are the most important explanations for variations in filing rates. The tendency of Americans to use the courts to resolve disputes is related to the milieu in which they live and how the political system responds to demands for participation and social support.

Institutional Foundations of the President’s Issue Agenda

In this study, we focus on an unresolved problem in our understanding of the construction of the presidential issue agenda: how to reconcile the president’s responsiveness to public opinion with his institutionalized electoral cycle. We argue that the president’s responsiveness is contingent: that the president allocates agenda space to discretionary issues when the strength of public opinion is high and the electoral cycle dictates responsiveness. We provide evidence for this claim by simultaneously addressing the potential influence of other relevant political actors, intra-administration considerations, and objective phenomena in the case of the president’s attention to crime issues over the second half of the twentieth century. Our statistical models show that while the president also responds to cues from other political actors, executive attention to public opinion depends on the president’s electoral circumstances. At the same time, because crime is a discretionary issue, we also find that presidents adjust their agenda to address competing domestic priorities.

Assessing the Impact of State Judicial Structures on Citizen Litigiousness

Some researchers argue over the existence of a “litigation explosion,” while others seek to understand the causes of variation in citizen legal mobilization and rates of litigation among states. Existing studies have provided important insight into citizens’ propensity to invoke the state courts to settle disputes; however, there remain unresolved questions concerning state litigation rates. The authors argue that the structural aspects of state judicial systems, specifically the professionalism of the courts and method of judicial selection, have important implications for litigiousness. They further suggest that the effects of these institutional structural characteristics are conditioned on the political environment of the state in which they operate. The authors consider tort litigation rates in ten states over twenty years to assess the proposition that these institutional structural characteristics of state court systems affect state citizen legal mobilization, expressed as litigation rates.

Agenda Setting, Issue Priorities and Organizational Maintenance: The US Supreme Court, 1955 to 1994

In this study, we examine agenda setting by the U.S. Supreme Court, and ask the question of why the Court allocates more or less of its valuable agenda space to one policy issue over others. Our study environment is the policy issue composition of the Courts docket: the Courts attention to criminal justice policy issues relative to other issues. We model the Courts allocation of this agenda space as a function of internal organizational demands and external political signals. We find that this agenda responds to the issue priorities of the other branches of the federal government and the public. We also find that the Courts internal ideological balance influences issue prioritization. In contrast, organizational maintenance considerations have no impact on the Courts allocation of its agenda.

Do Policy Messengers Matter? Majority Opinion Writers as Policy Cues in Public Agreement with Supreme Court Decisions

Does the identity of a majority opinion writer affect the level of agreement a Supreme Court decision receives from the public? Using a survey experiment, we manipulate majority opinion authors to investigate whether individuals are willing to agree with Supreme Court opinions authored by ideologically similar justices even though the decisions cut against their self-identified ideological policy preferences. Our study provides insight into the extent to which policy cues—represented by a political institution’s policy messenger—affect agreement with a given policy. We find that a messenger effect indeed augments the level of agreement a given Supreme Court case receives.