Joshua B. Fischman

Estimating Preferences of Circuit Judges: A Model of Consensus Voting

This paper develops a consensus voting model for estimating preferences of federal circuit court judges. Unlike standard ideal point models, which assume that judges vote sincerely for their preferred outcomes, the consensus model accounts for the norm of consensus in the courts of appeals by including a cost of dissent in the judicial utility function. A test of the consensus voting model on a data set of asylum appeals demonstrates that it provides a substantially better fit than a comparable sincere voting model and also generates more accurate predictions of voting probabilities. The model generates credible estimates of the impact of panel composition on case outcomes, which is surprisingly large in the asylum cases. Even though 95 percent of these decisions were unanimous, roughly half of the cases could have been decided differently if assigned to different panels.

Do Standards of Review Matter? The Case of Federal Criminal Sentencing

We study whether changes to standards of review affect district court sentencing decisions under the U.S. sentencing guidelines. Departures from the guidelines by district judges have at times been reviewed strictly or deferentially. If review standards are constraining, then differences among judges should be larger when review is deferential. We find that Democratic appointees are more lenient than Republican appointees under deferential review, but this difference significantly narrows when review is strict. We conclude that district judges are meaningfully constrained by the prospect of appellate reversal. By contrast, judges appointed before the adoption of the guidelines are more likely to depart and issue shorter sentences, but their decisions are not significantly affected by the standard of review. We suggest that the constraining effect of appellate review varies with a judge’s respect for the underlying legal regime.

Do the Justices Vote Like Policy Makers? Evidence from Scaling the Supreme Court with Interest Groups

Research in judicial politics often assumes that Supreme Court justices vote on the basis of one-dimensional policy preferences. This article challenges this assumption using multidimensional scaling in two dimensions to compare the justices’ votes with positions taken by interest groups in Supreme Court cases. Focusing on two active groups, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the US Chamber of Commerce, the article demonstrates that the voting alignments of the justices deviate substantially from the policy dimensions identified by the interest groups. Although the scaling approach cannot determine whether the divergence is due to countervailing policy influences or disagreements about legal methodology, a qualitative examination of the cases suggests some of both. These findings cast doubt on the notion that the Court operates in a one-dimensional policy space and suggest the need for more nuanced models of judicial motivation.