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Author ORCID Identifier
N/A
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
Political Science
Year Degree Awarded
2016
Month Degree Awarded
September
First Advisor
John Brigham
Second Advisor
Bruce A. Desmarais
Third Advisor
James A. Kitts
Subject Categories
Other Political Science
Abstract
Questions regarding what persuades jurists—and how legal decisionmakers actually do their work—are profound, motivating, and complex. The Public Law subfield has worked diligently to obtain empirically principled answers, but the gaps that remain provide an opportunity for this project to (hopefully) make a contribution. After discussing the nature of judicial decisionmaking, it is reasoned that rather than trying to understand jurists based upon the ways that their biases come into their work, a more effective approach is to isolate the occasions where they make unbiased decisions. In the interest of furthering the argument, a theoretical framework is offered that aims to isolate the major factors that will influence a jurist to “follow the law.” After a review of the state of the empirical study of judicial decisionmaking, three subprojects are presented, two of which tie directly to terms in the theoretical framework. The first is a novel effort to construct a network of case citations based upon specific language used in majority opinions. The second examines the propensity of Supreme Court Justices to cite to more “central” opinions when they are tending towards moderation in terms of ideology. The third subproject focuses on the often overlooked difficulty that scholars have when attempting to state with definitive certainty what an “unbiased” legal opinion actually is. These three subprojects are modest efforts to open new directions in research. Not all of the results that have been obtained fully square with the theoretical expectations that preceded them.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/9017889.0
Recommended Citation
ben-Aaron, James, "Citation Networks, Linguistics-Based Cues, and Logic-Based Approaches to Understanding What Persuades a Judge to Forsake Bias" (2016). Doctoral Dissertations. 732.
https://doi.org/10.7275/9017889.0
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/732