Lydia Brashear Tiede

Judicial Behavior on the Chilean Constitutional Tribunal

Research on judicial independence suggests that high courts can be designed to serve as external checks on political actors. However, independence from political influence does not necessarily imply incentives to use these powers. Chiles Constitutional Tribunal, while possessing significant powers, has been characterized as generally deferential to political actors. Using rulings from the Tribunal from 1990–2010, we examine whether reforms that increased the number of judges appointed by politicians and expanded the Tribunals jurisdiction have contributed to a more assertive use of judicial review power. We find that the reforms have not produced an increased tendency to rule laws unconstitutional under abstract review. However, the new appointment structure has nevertheless increased the types of judges relatively more likely to assert this power. Specifically, after the reforms, judges appointed by elected actors were individually more likely to find laws unconstitutional than those appointed by the Supreme Court, especially on cases of concrete review of enacted laws. We also find that cases of abstract review brought by legislators have been especially associated with both unconstitutional rulings and individual judicial votes for unconstitutionality.

The Impact of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and Reform: A Comparative Analysis

In this article, application of the United States Sentencing Guidelines among district court judges adjudicating substantially similar drug cases is compared. When district court judges use the Guidelines, either applying ranges from the sentencing table or explicitly departing from them, average sentences and sentence variation among the circuits analyzed are very similar. However, rates of departure from the Guidelines by district court judges in some circuits vary significantly. Further, district court judges in the circuits analyzed reacted differently than judges nationwide to three significant legal events: the PROTECT Act (2003) (limiting judicial discretion), Blakely v. Washington (2004), and United States v. Booker (2005) (expanding judicial discretion). This analysis suggests that long-existing federal Sentencing Guideline schemes, whether mandatory or advisory, reduce disparities in sentences when judges apply the Guideline ranges, but not disparities associated with the choice of whether to apply those ranges.

Ideological Voting on Chile's Constitutional Tribunal: Dissent Coalitions in the Adjudication of Rights

In this article, we examine the relationship between judicial behavior on the Chilean Constitutional Tribunal and the political background of its judges since the constitutional reforms of 2005. We first examine judges’ positions on rulings and find that some distinction has emerged among judges with different political backgrounds and between partisan members and nonpartisans. Notably, these distinctions vary across subject matter and case type. Second, we examine the judges’ behavior in nonunanimous cases using a multidimensional scaling analysis and find that the pattern of dissent coalitions is consistent with a general separation between the judges with center-left and right backgrounds. Finally, we examine several cases to illustrate the patterns on the Tribunal in this period. We conclude that some ideological differences on the Tribunal have emerged while a broadly “political” pattern of judicial dissents has so far not occurred.

Delegating Discretion Quasi Experiments on District Court Decision Making

I test how the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, promulgated by the United States Sentencing Commission, affected district court decision making from 1999 to 2003. Policymakers effectively used legal regulation to constrain judicial discretion by specifying (a) the sentencing ranges applicable to certain factual patterns, (b) the departures from these ranges allowed for prosecutors, or (c) the departures allowed for judges. My results establish significant differences in how judges make decisions depending on whether or not they were constrained by guideline ranges. When the guidelines curtailed judges’ discretion, judges followed these guidelines but overwhelmingly sentenced defendants to the minimum sentence possible under the guidelines. Conversely, when guidelines allowed judges to depart from the sentencing ranges and instead to exercise broad discretion, they used this authority, and case sentences, although widely varying, were right censored at a point at or below the guideline minimum. Finally, the lowest sentences arose from prosecutors’ motions rather than judges’ own initiatives.

Voter Knowledge of Candidates’ Judicial Philosophies

Judicial elections are typical “down ballot” contests, rarely capturing the interest of most voters. To help distinguish themselves at the polls, judicial candidates have begun to publish their decision-making philosophies with the apparent hope of informing voters. Using survey data collected during the 2012 elections, we explore how well individuals understand such philosophies. In general, we find that voters have very little understanding of various types of judicial philosophies and thus we question whether the enormous time and expenditure invested in broadcasting such philosophies is advantageous to voters.

Party Labels and Vote Choice in Judicial Elections

The vast majority of states use elections to select at least some of their judges. The chief institutional variation in these contests is whether the candidates’ partisanship appears on the ballot. This article expands on the extant literature with new data to examine how providing a party label influences voters’ decisions. Using a survey experiment involving a low-visibility state appellate court, we find that affixing party labels to judicial candidates often helps our subjects select the candidate who is most aligned with their own party attachment and with their policy interests—an outcome that is especially notable for self-identified independents. We also show that the presence of party labels reduces the effect of another cue, gender. The results add context to the debate over the merits and drawbacks of partisan versus nonpartisan elections.

Explaining dissensus on the Bulgarian constitutional court

ABSTRACT Using original data, this study investigates the determinants of dissent on the Bulgarian Constitutional Court, which occurs frequently and is high by comparative standards. This analysis contributes to the debate on whether courts and judges are driven by policy motivations or legal doctrine by providing evidence from a constitutional court created after a democratic transition. Dissent is more likely when the court as a whole and individual judges decide controversial cases, and when the benefits of dissensus outweigh their costs. Additionally, judges’ individual characteristics related to prior careers in politics and their party alignment with the governing coalition drive dissent. The effect of judges’ alignment, however, is conditioned on the case outcome, suggesting that justices use dissent when it is politically expedient to do so.

Vacancy in Justice: Analyzing the Impact of Overburdened Judges on Sentencing Decisions

Policymakers and scholars repeatedly warn that frequent and persistent judicial vacancies pose one of the greatest threats to the federal judiciary by overburdening judges. Scholars, in turn, are divided as to whether pressure on judges results in more lenient punishment. Despite such concerns, the effect of vacancies is rarely tested directly and related studies generally fail to account for issues of endogeneity related to vacancies and caseloads. We address both concerns by using an innovative instrumental variables strategy and unique data, consisting of over 400,000 cases to test vacancies’ effects on federal district court judges’ sentencing decisions. We find that overburdened judges take shortcuts, such as using focal points and cues, resulting in harsher sentences. The analysis has significant implications for those concerned with civil liberties and taxpayers who must shoulder the financial costs of incarceration.

The Revival of the Rule of Law in the Wake of Civil War

AbstractPost-conflict governance poses particular challenges to governments and foreign assistance providers. We focus on the question of how — and whether the rule of law is reconstituted in the wake of civil conflict. We find evidence that the state of the rule of law prior to and during a conflict substantially predicts the reconstitution of the rule of law post conflict. We further find that foreign intervention has a positive influence on the rule of law post conflict and that wars which end with a truth or settlement are associated with better rule of law post conflict than those resolved through victories by either government or rebel forces.