Linda Camp Keith

Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited: A Global Cross-National Study Covering the Years 1976-1993

Here we seek to build on our earlier research (Poe and Tate, 1994) by re-testing similar models on a data set covering a much longer time span; the period from 1976 to 1993. Several of our findings differ from those of our earlier work. Here we find statistical evidence that military regimes lead to somewhat greater human rights abuse, defined in terms of violations of personal integrity, once democracy and a host of other factors are controlled. Further, we find that countries that have experienced British colonial influence tend to have relatively fewer abuses of personal integrity rights than others. Finally, our results suggest that leftist countries are actually less repressive of these basic human rights than non-leftist countries. Consistent with the Poe and Tate (1994) study, however, we find that past levels of repression, democracy, population size, economic development, and international and civil wars exercise statistically significant and substantively important impacts on personal integrity abuse.

Is The Law a Mere Parchment Barrier to Human Rights Abuse

The “mere parchment barriers” created by constitutional provisions may lead to decreases in the extent to which nations abuse the human right not to be imprisoned, tortured, killed, or made to disappear arbitrarily or because of your political views. A global pooled cross-national time-series analysis for a 21-year period shows that adopting selected constitutional provisions protecting individual rights and freedoms, promoting judicial independence, and guarding against states of emergency—and keeping the provisions in place for 10 years—has the potential to reduce a nations level of state terror substantially, from one in which political imprisonment affects large numbers of the politically active population and political murders are common, to one where the rule of law is secure, for example. We report significant caveats about and limitations of the research. Nevertheless, we conclude that, since it may be easier to change constitutions than to build effective democracy, to create massive amounts of new wealth, or to avoid or defuse deeply ingrained conflicts, these findings have possible policy and scientific importance.

Acclimation effects for Supreme Court Justices: A cross-validation, 1888-1940

Theory: As they learn a new role, Justices experience an initial period of adjustment to the Supreme Court, which creates voting instability. Hypothesis: Justices during the time 1888-1940 are more likely to experience acclimation effects than those in the modem era. Those with judicial experience, however, may not experience such shifts. Methods: Difference of means tests are employed to consider the differences in voting behavior between the first two years of a justices tenure on the Court and the remaining years. Results: Twenty-five freshman justices from 1888-1940 experienced a weaker acclimation effect than those in the modern era. Those who lacked judicial experience were particularly prone to experience acclimation effects, especially in judicial power cases.

Legal Systems and Constitutionalism in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Empirical Examination of Colonial Influences on Human Rights

This article examines the extent to which the British and French colonial legacies influence the human rights behavior of post-colonial African states. We have examined three areas where the literature suggests different colonial experiences for former British and French colonies: legal systems, formal provisions for judicial independence, and emergency powers. Our findings show very little support that different colonial legacies in those three areas affect the level of state abuse of personal integrity in sub-Saharan Africa. We find no solid evidence, for example, that common law system countries have better human rights behavior than civil code system countries. Nor is there any support for the propositions that former French colonies would have less constitutional provisions for judicial independence and checks against the executive during times of emergency than English colonies. Indeed, contrary to expectations, it is the French-legacy states that have stronger protections for emergency powers, perhaps suggesting recognition of the broad powers of the president in the bequeathed French political system and the need to curtail some of those powers. Likewise, we find little evidence that these elements affect their human rights behavior.

Reexamining the Impact of the Bork Nomination to the Supreme Court

This research note expands on the work of Guliuzza, Reagan, and Barrett (1994) by reexamining the impact of the Bork nomination on the confirmation criteria that the Senate Judiciary Committee applies to Supreme Court nominees. In a multivariate analysis we examine empirically whether the Bork nomination did, in fact, mark a change in the level of constitutional questions to which the nominees are subjected. Contrary to Guliuzza et al., we find that the Bork nomination did produce a substantively and statistically significant impact on the Committees probe of the nominees constitutional views. However, further study suggests that the extra focus on the judicial philosophies of Supreme Court nominees by the Judiciary Committee began earlier, with the first Rehnquist nomination, and that the Bork nomination simply continued this process. Additionally, we find that the level of constitutional questioning is significantly affected by the individual characteristics of the nominees (qualification and political closeness to the President) and one element of the political environment the Presidents fourth year in office.

The Supreme Court, 1888-1940: An Empirical Overview

Studies of decision making on the modern Supreme Court have drawn on readily available empirical data to explore the details of how the Court conducts its business (Segal and Spaeth 1993; Spaeth 1995). Sadly, however, such empirical studies have not been plentiful for periods of the Court’s history before the appointment of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Some discussion has occurred dating from the chief justiceship of William Howard Taft beginning in 1910, but these studies have limited scope (Bowen and Scheb 1993; Leavitt 1970; Pritchett 1948; Renstrom 1972; Slotnick 1979; Tate and Handberg 1991). The result is a plethora of studies concerning the modern Court and a dearth of systematic information on earlier Courts (Aliotta 1988; Brenner and Spaeth 1995; Epstein and Kobylka 1992; George and Epstein 1992; Handberg 1976; Schubert 1965, 1974; Segal 1984; Tate 1981; Ulmer 1970). The picture we do have concerning earlier Courts is largely drawn from biographical or doctrinal studies. While both of these enterprises are immensely useful, they lack the systematic quality of an empirical analysis that considers all cases (not just the important ones) and all justices (not just the intellectual or social leaders). We seek to create an empirical context out of which those outstanding justices and decisions arose. Our study allows confirmation of findings of previous studies of individuals and doctrine and provides a more complete picture of the Court during a tumultuous time in its history.

Does the Fear of Terrorists Trump The Fear of Persecution in Asylum Outcomes in the Post-September 11 Era?

Historically, U.S. asylum policy has reflected both an effort to provide safe haven for deserving asylum seekers as well the intent to promote national security and domestic policy priorities. A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that asylum outcomes, at least in the aggregate, have been weighted more heavily by foreign policy considerations than humanitarian concerns. Since the mid 1990s, the United States government has reformed the asylum system in response to concerns of abuse by economic migrants, burgeoning caseloads, and national security threats. While as Davergne (2008) points out “the most reviled of asylum seekers of the global era is the ‘economic refugee,’ under suspicion of fleeing poverty and poor prospects in search of a better life” rather than fleeing because of the fear of persecution (65), following terrorist attacks on the United States in 1993 and 2001, the fears of economic opportunists abusing the system combined with a broader fear of potential terrorists gaining legal entry into the country through an overburdened asylum system. Since 1995, Congress has passed two major acts to reform the asylum process in reaction to these fears. Both the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the 2005 Real ID act were passed to prevent economic migrants and individuals who may pose security risks from entering the country on false claims of asylum. Following September 11th the U.S. government has pursued prosecution for documents fraud among asylum applicants and aggressively enforced safe third-country requirements. And like our European counterparts, the United States has increasing taken more deterrent and preventative actions to discourage asylum applicants from choosing it as a target for asylum and to prevent potential applicants from reaching its ports of entry. Critics fear that the draconian measures taken in response to these fears are overly broad and worry that worthy applicants have been turned away at the border or denied asylum with increasing frequency, thus, facing the real possibility of torture and other forms of persecution. In this essay, we examine changes in U.S. asylum policy and whether the heightened security concerns after September 11th have significantly influenced the U.S. asylum process and outcomes in U.S. immigration courts.

How Draconian Are the Changes to US Asylum Law?: A Monthly Time Series Analysis (1990–2010)

How have recent changes to US asylum law altered who gets asylum? We investigate whether the changes wrought by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and the Real ID Act changed the decision making of immigration judges in asylum cases. We find, contrary to much of the commentary surrounding both IIRIRA and Real ID, that immigration judges became more likely to grant applicants asylum. Furthermore, we find that those applicants who are most at-risk of persecution in the countries they are fleeing are also the applicants most likely to be granted relief—a fact that became increasingly true with the implementation of IIRIRA and Real ID.

Second-Order Evaluations of the European Court of Human Rights

Scholars have found that citizens tend to evaluate European institutions in light of how they feel about their own domestic institutions (second-order evaluations). We argue that this approach is more appropriate for understanding international courts than is the legitimacy approach of the law and courts literature. While studies applying the second-order evaluations approach have overwhelmingly focused on EU institutions, here we seek to determine whether second-order evaluations are also characteristic of citizens’ opinions about the European Court of Human Rights. We evaluate our hypotheses using a sample of the British population and find strong support for the general second-order evaluation.