Robert A. Carp

PRESIDENTIAL EFFECTS ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY IN THE LOWER FEDERAL COURTS: THE REAGAN JUDGES

Scholarly and media accounts have portrayed the Reagan administration as strongly committed to the selection of judges who are ideologically in tune with the president. Interviews with key congressional participants indicate that Reagan has received substantial home-state support for his ideological selection criteria. These findings lead to the prediction that Reagan judges on the lower federal courts will be substantially less supportive of criminal defendants than will Nixon or Carter appointees. Analysis of each appointment cohorts criminal justice decisions confirms this expectation for the district courts and courts of appeals. Indeed, the degree of polarization between the Reagan and Carter cohorts is unprecedented. However, this difference was due to the unexpectedly high support for criminal defendants exhibited by Carter appointees as well as the predicted low support provided by Reagan judges.

Judges' Policy Choices and the Value Basis of Judicial Appointments: A Comparison of Support for Criminal Defendants among Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy Appointees to the Federal District Courts

Using cases reported in the Federal Supplement, this study examines differences in support for criminal defendants among Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon appointees to the federal district courts. With controls for judicial era, region, and state, the research explores various legal and environmental constraints on presidential influences on the district judges. The findings lend support to value-based theories of judicial behavior, namely, that presidents do influence public policy through their judicial appointments. However, the results also reveal that the quantity and quality of presidential impact are shaped by numerous legal and extralegal factors, many of which are beyond the presidents control.

Gender, Critical Mass, and Judicial Decision Making

We examine the role of gender in legal decision making by applying critical mass theory to the U.S. federal district courts. We analyze whether behavioral differences manifest themselves in the decision-making proclivities of male and female judges, contingent on the existence of a critical mass of female judges at a court point (i.e., each city in which a district court is located). Our results indicate that women jurists exhibit distinctive behavior in certain cases when there is a critical mass of women at a court point. These differences are most significant in criminal justice cases; modest differences between men and women are also identified in civil rights and liberties cases. Gender is not significant in labor and economic regulation cases. These findings suggest that the increasing presence of women on the federal bench could have substantial policy ramifications in the American polity.

The Gender Influence on US District Court Decisions: Updating the Traditional Judge Attribute Model

ABSTRACT. The present study contributes to the literature on federal lower court decision‐making as well as the broader body of research on gender effects on elite behavior by showing how gender, as a determinant of behavior, is filtered through other sociological determinants of decisional behavior. Starting with the assumption that personal attributes influence decision‐making patterns, our argument is that gender effects are not direct; rather, they subtly and indirectly influence elite behavior by providing another “lens” or “layer” by which a judge will view his or her world. These effects cannot be directly observed using traditional attribute behavioral models. We test our hypotheses with data on 35,038 published decisions by federal district court judges from the 1977 to 2005 terms. The results of this analysis indicate that gender has a subtle and indirect influence on judicial behavior that is not captured by traditional judge attribute models.

WOMEN'S RIGHTS BEFORE THE FEDERAL DISTRICT COURTS, 1971-1977

This study analyzes opinions published by federal district judges in womens rights and racial minority discrimination cases in the period 1971-1977. Our analysis revealed that the petitioner in womens rights cases was only slightly more likely to be victorious than litigants from other disadvantaged groups. Using a regional variable, we found no significant differences between northern and southern judges deciding womens rights cases. However, the judges political party identification proved to be an important variable, and a meaningful split was found to exist between Democratic and Republican jurists in womens rights decisions.

Support for labor and economic regulation among Reagan and Carter appointees to the Federal Courts

Abstract Appointment of federal judges has become highly politicized over the past 25 years as presidents and political parties have become more intent on appointing judges who agree with their political ideology and perhaps even specific policy goals. This study of 3700 opinions assesses the extent to which Presidents Carter and Reagan succeeded in influencing the policy decisions of their appointees in labor and economic regulation cases. Analysis shows that Reagan judges are similar to judges appointed by other Republican presidents and that Carter judges are similar to judges appointed by other Democratic presidents.

Indian rights and law before the federal district courts

Abstract This study subjects to quantitative analysis the decisional behavior of U.S. trial judges on the subject of Indian rights and law. Following a general discussion of the status of Native Americans in the U.S. legal system we focus more specifically on current case law regarding Indian rights and law. Not unexpectedly, there is a great deal of ambiguity in this legal realm. Since the judicial behavior literature indicates that ambiguous legal areas are fertile realms for judges to manifest their personal/partisan values in their judicial decisionmaking, we test the hypothesis that judges appointed by Democratic presidents respond differently to the pleas of Native American petitioners than do their colleagues selected by Republican chief executives. Our findings reveal that judges placed on the bench by a Democratic president are significantly more likely to support the Indian litigant.

The polarization of the judiciary

The polarization of political parties in the United States is a well-documented phenomenon. This paper considers polarization of the judicial branch and relates it to the evolution of the parties. In this paper we define polarization specifically as movement from a modal distribution (of votes, attitudes, or decisions) to a bimodal distribution along a liberal-conservative spectrum over time. Using data compiled from 90,000 United States District Court decisions published in the Federal Supplement between 1934 and 2008, we find that the judiciary began to polarize in the 1960s and has remained polarized. We consider a number of competing explanations for the polarization of the district courts, including a top-down view that emphasizes presidential power and a bottom-up view that focuses on the sorting of elites that form the pool of potential judges.