Stacia L. Haynie

Experienced Advocates and Litigation Outcomes: Repeat Players in the South African Supreme Court of Appeal

While the facts and the attendant law are essential components of understanding litigation outcomes, extralegal factors, such as the experience of the attorney representing each party, are also significantly related. The authors assert that the capability of the attorney, as evidenced in previous litigation success, is more significant than experience alone. They test this assertion for the South African appellate court from 1970 to 2000. After controlling for the effects of a number of variables, the results suggest that the previous success of the advocate is a far better predictor of litigation outcomes than previous experience, litigant status, or court ideology.

Building an Integrated Model of Trial Court Decision Making Predicting Plaintiff Success and Awards across Circuits

This study creates and empirically tests an integrated model of trial court decision making to explore the hypothesis that jury verdicts reflect the social, political, and economic attributes of the community in which the court resides. In addition, the analyses examine the influence of attorneys, litigants, case facts, and judges on trial outcomes. Using an original data set comprising all reported civil trial verdicts decided in the state of Alabama from 2002 to 2008, we uncover strong evidence that community composition influences both the dispute resolution and resource allocation functions of trial courts. This research improves our knowledge of trial court decision making and contributes to our theoretical understanding of the effect of extralegal factors on the performance of political institutions.

Courts and Revolution: Independence and Legitimacy in the New Republic of South Africa

The New Republic of South Africa is facing tremendous political, social, and economic upheaval as it establishes a constitutional democracy through the redistribution of powerfrom the white minority National Party government to the new black majority African National Congress (ANC) led by Nelson Mandela. The changes have been swift and immense. I focus specifically on the changes to the legal system brought on by the end of the apartheid era. I assess both the efforts of the New Republic of South Africa to increase the independence of the courts and the legitimacy of the legal system and the future of South Africa. This analysis certainly is neither exhaustive nor complete, but it is an attempt to articulate perceptions gained through recent interviews with South African legal scholars and legal practitioners. It is hoped that this effort will provide limited but helpful information in the evaluation of the “New South Africa.”

Does Size Matter? The Influence of Law Firm Size on Litigant Success Rates

In his influential piece, Galanter (1974) argues that repeat players in the judicial system can be expected to succeed at trial in part because of the advantages repeat players enjoy compared to the one-shotters. This article explores the effect of a number of the benefits Galanter identifies on litigation outcomes for civil jury trials in four states with particular attention to the size of the law firms representing the litigants. We find possessing an advantage in relative firm size, without considering other factors, appears to produce no significant advantage in terms of achieving plaintiff compensation. On the other hand, a local presence in the county where the trial occurs increases plaintiff attorney success rates when challenging out-of-town defense firms, especially when the plaintiffs law firm is the larger of the two. Additionally, devoting more resources in terms of human capital to a particular case increases the probability of favorable outcomes.

Panel Assignment in Appellate Courts: Strategic Behaviour in the South African Supreme Court of Appeal

Numerous studies on judges in various countries have found that judges behave strategically in order to obtain politically favourable case outcomes. In this study, we examine whether chief justices of the South African Supreme Court of Appeal1 strategically assign judges to panels to maximize the political favourability of case outcomes. We confirm what other South African scholars have found, that chief justices do strategically make panel assignments. More critically, our analysis shows that they take into account the cumulative composition of the final panel rather than solely considering the individual judges. Specifically, we find that chief justices attempt to make panel assignments in order to maximize the ideological proximity of a minimum winning coalition on the panel, especially in highly salient cases. We assert that by strategically appointing the panels, the chief increases the likelihood that the minimum number of judges necessary will vote in his preferred direction. Thus, we provide further evidence that judges engage in strategic behaviour during the decision-making process.

The Philippine Supreme Court and Regime Response, 1970-2000

The behaviour of appellate courts has long fascinated scholars. Specifically, scholars have been attentive to the effect of the political context on judicial outcomes. This paper focuses on the decision-making of the Philippine Supreme Court (“Court”) over multiple decades with particular attention to the influence of changes in the executive branch on the outcomes of cases brought to the Court. The analysis evaluates the decisions of the Court from 1970 through 2000, encompassing the turmoil of the Marcos years through the first few years of the tumultuous tenure of Joseph Estrada. We test the hypothesis, grounded in Galanter’s seminal work, that the government has substantial advantages in the legal system and thus enjoys greater success than other litigants. The government has theoretically unlimited resources with which to litigate, control over the staffing of the bench, and authority over, or at least major influence on, the laws that the courts interpret. As a result, the government is expected to win the majority of the challenges that come before the Court. The Philippines provides an excellent laboratory to test this thesis. In the Marcos era the Court faced a dictator professing “constitutional authoritarianism” whose regime ultimately was toppled by the People Power Revolution. His successor, Corazon Aquino, was initially embraced as the popular wife of an assassinated hero, Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr., but later faced a series of attempts to topple her regime. President Fidel Ramos served for 6 years leading the nation through a period of economic growth. Elected by a wide margin in 1998, President Joseph Estrada quickly lost the confidence of the Filipino people as well as the business and military sectors. By 2001, he was removed from office through political actions which some consider the People Power II. This analysis evaluates the winners and losers before the Philippine Supreme Court across the tenures of these presidencies with particular focus on the ability of the Filipino government to succeed when compared to individuals and businesses and the success of different regimes over time as the executive’s popularity surges and wanes. The results suggest, that like other institutions, the Philippine Supreme Court responded to the rise and fall of the personal politics that dominates the distribution of power in this Asian archipelago.

Judicial decision-making and the use of panels in the South African Appellate Division, 1950-1990

Against a body of established theory suggesting that Courts are social constructs which mirror the societies in which they reside and that judicial outcomes frequently reflect prevailing political and other societal attitudes, the present article examines the extent to which judges can also act strategically to maximize their preferred outcomes. It does so through an empirical analysis of the behaviour of six Chief Justices who presided over South Africas highest court--the Appelate Division--in the era of apartheid between 1950 and 1990.