Judicial Deference in the Modern State

doi:10.1017/9781108234979.011

10 - Judicial Deference in the Modern State

from Part III - Judicial Policymaking and the Modern State

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 April 2019

Edited by

Hadar Aviram and

Rosann Greenspan: Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Hadar Aviram: Affiliation:
University of California, Hastings College of the Law
Jonathan Simon: Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley

Book contents

Get access

Summary

In stark contrast to the ideal of an impartial judge who reaches a decision by impassively applying the law to the facts of a case, decades of research on judicial decision-making show that judicial reasoning is in reality affected by judges’ political views and attitudes, by strategic considerations, and by historical and cultural factors. Attitudinal theorists emphasize the impact of judges’ ideological values on judicial decision-making and point out that, especially where law is ambiguous, partisan voting tends to influence judicial thinking (Epstein, Landes, and Posner 2013; Pritchett 1948; Segal and Cover 1989). Strategic choice scholars qualify the attitudinal model by arguing that judges take into account the preferences of their colleagues, elected officials, and the public, in part to minimize the likelihood that their decisions will be overturned (Epstein and Knight 1998; Wahlbeck, Spriggs, and Maltzman 1998; Epstein and Knight 2000).

Type: Chapter
Information: The Legal Process and the Promise of Justice
Studies Inspired by the Work of Malcolm Feeley
, pp. 193 - 214

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108234979.011 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baron, James N., Mittman, Brian S., and Newman, rew E.. 1991. “Targets of Opportunity: Organizational and Environmental Determinants of Gender Integration within the California Civil Service, 1979–1985.” American Journal of Sociology 96 (6): 1362–401.Google Scholar

Belbot, Barbara. 2004. “Report on the Prison Litigation Reform Act: What Have the Courts Decided So Far?” Prison Journal 84 (3): 290–316.Google Scholar

Bisom-Rapp, Susan. 1999. “Bulletproofing the Workplace: Symbol and Substance in Employment Discrimination Law Practice.” Florida State University Law Review 26 (4): 959–1048.Google Scholar

Bordt, Rebecca L. and Musheno, Michael C.. 1988. “Bureaucratic Co-Optation of Informal Dispute Processing: Social Control as an Effect of Inmate Grievance Policy.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 25 (1): 7–26.Google Scholar

Brakel, Samuel Jan. 1983. “Ruling on Prisoners’ Grievances.” American Bar Foundation Research Journal 8 (2): 393–426.Google Scholar

Calavita, Kitty and Jenness, Valerie. 2015. Appealing to Justice: Prisoner Grievances, Rights, and Carceral Logic. Oakland: University of California Press.Google Scholar

Carbado, Devon W. and Gulati, Mitu. 2013. Acting White? Rethinking Race in Post-Racial America. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Clayton, Cornell W. and Gillman, Howard. 1999. Supreme Court Decision-Making: New Institutionalist Approaches. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Colvin, Alexander J. S. 2011. “An Empirical Study of Employment Arbitration: Case Outcomes and Processes.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 8 (1): 1–23.Google Scholar

Dover, Tessa L., Major, Brenda, and Kaiser, Cheryl R.. 2014. “Diversity Initiatives, Status, and System-Justifying Beliefs: When and How Diversity Efforts De-Legitimize Discrimination Claims.” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 17 (4): 485–93.Google Scholar

Edelman, Lauren B. 1992. “Legal Ambiguity and Symbolic Structures: Organizational Mediation of Civil Rights Law.” American Journal of Sociology 97 (6): 1531–76.Google Scholar

Edelman, Lauren B. 2016. Working Law: Courts, Corporations, and Symbolic Civil Rights. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Edelman, Lauren B., Abraham, Steven E., and Erlanger, Howard S.. 1992. “Professional Construction of Law: The Inflated Threat of Wrongful Discharge Doctrine.” Law & Society Review 26 (1): 47–83.Google Scholar

Edelman, Lauren B., Erlanger, Howard S., and Lande, John. 1993. “Internal Dispute Resolution: The Transformation of Civil Rights in the Workplace.” Law & Society Review 27 (3): 497–534.Google Scholar

Edelman, Lauren B., Fuller, Sally Riggs, and Mara-Drita, Iona. 2001. “Diversity Rhetoric and the Managerialization of Law.” American Journal of Sociology 106 (6): 1589–641.Google Scholar

Edelman, Lauren B., Krieger, Linda H., Eliason, Scott R., Albiston, Catherine R., and Mellema, Virginia. 2011. “When Organizations Rule: Judicial Deference to Institutionalized Employment Structures.” American Journal of Sociology 117 (3): 888–954.Google Scholar

Edelman, Lauren B. and Petterson, Stephen. 1999. “Symbols and Substance in Organizational Response to Civil Rights Law.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 17: 107–35.Google Scholar

Edelman, Lauren B., Uggen, Christopher, and Erlanger, Howard S.. 1999. “The endogeneity of legal regulation: Grievance procedures as rational myth 1.” American Journal of Sociology 105 (2): 406–54.Google Scholar

Epstein, Lee, Landes, William M., and Posner, Richard A.. 2013. The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar

Epstein, Lee and Knight, Jack. The Choices Justices Make. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1998.Google Scholar

Epstein, Lee and Knight, Jack. 2000. “Toward a strategic revolution in judicial politics: A look back, a look ahead.” Political Research Quarterly 53 (3): 625–61.Google Scholar

Feeley, Malcolm M. and Rubin, Edward L.. 1998. Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State: How the Courts Reformed America’s Prisons. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Feeley, Malcolm M. and Swearingen, Van. 2004. “The Prison Conditions Cases and the Bureaucratization of American Corrections: Influences, Impacts and Implications.” Pace Law Review 24 (2): 433–76.Google Scholar

Feeley, Malcolm M. and Swearingen, Van. 2017. “Devolving Standards: California’s Structural Failures in Response to Prisoner Litigation,” in Varieties of Legal Order: The Politics of Adversarial and Bureaucratic Legalism, edited by Barnes, John and Burke, Thomas. New York: Routledge: 155–177.Google Scholar

French, Christopher C. 2012. “Debunking the Myth That Insurance Coverage Is Not Available or Allowed for Intentional Injuries or Damage.” Hastings Business Law Journal 8 (1): 65–102.Google Scholar

Gertner, Nancy. 2012. “Losers’ Rules.” Yale Law Journal Online 122: 109–24.Google Scholar

Giblin, Edward J. and Ornati, Oscar A.. 1975. “Beyond Compliance: EEO and the Dynamics of Organizational Change.” Personnel 52 (5): 38–50.Google Scholar

Guetzkow, Joshua and Schoon, Eric. 2015. “If you build it, they will fill it: The consequences of prison overcrowding litigation.” Law & Society Review 49 (2): 401–32.Google Scholar

Gunningham, Neil, Kagan, Robert A., and Thornton, Dorothy. 2003. Shades of green: business, regulation, and environment. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar

Guthrie, Chris. 2007. “Misjudging.” Nevada Law Journal 7: 420–56.Google Scholar

Guthrie, Chris, Rachlinski, Jeffrey J., and Wistrich, rew J.. 2007. “Blinking on the Bench: How Judges Decide Cases.” Cornell Law Review 93 (1): 1–44.Google Scholar

Guthrie, Chris, Rachlinski, Jeffrey J., and Wistrich, rew J.. 2002.“Judging by Heuristic–Cognitive Illusions in Judicial Decision Making.” Judicature 86 (1): 44–50.Google Scholar

Kaiser, Cheryl R. and Major, Brenda. “A Social Psychological Perspective on Perceiving and Reporting Discrimination.” Law & Social Inquiry 31, no. 4 (2006): 801–30.Google Scholar

Kaiser, Cheryl R., Major, Brenda, Jurcevic, Ines, Dover, Tessa L., Brady, Laura M., and Shapiro, Jenessa R.. 2013. “Presumed Fair: Ironic Effects of Organizational Diversity Structures.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 104 (3): 504–19.Google Scholar

Kalev, Alexandra, Dobbin, Frank, and Kelly, Erin. 2006.“Best Practices or Best Guesses? Assessing the Efficacy of Corporate Affirmative Action and Diversity Policies.” American Sociological Review 71 (4): 589–617.Google Scholar

Krieger, Linda Hamilton, Best, Rachel Kahn, and Edelman, Lauren B.. 2015. “When ‘Best Practices’ Win, Employees Lose: Symbolic Compliance and Judicial Inference in Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Cases.” Law & Social Inquiry 40 (4): 843–79.Google Scholar

Linenberger, Patricia and Keaveny, Timothy J.. 1981. “Sexual Harassment: The Employer’s Legal Obligations.” Personnel 58 (6): 60–68.Google Scholar

Martin, And rew D. and Quinn, Kevin M.. 2002. “Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation Via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999.” Political Analysis 10 (2): 134–53.Google Scholar

McGuire, Kevin T. “The Institutionalization of the U.S. Supreme Court.” Political Analysis 12, no. 2 (2004): 128–42.Google Scholar

Mootz, Francis J., III. 1997. “Insurance Coverage of Employment Discrimination Claims.” University of Miami Law Review 52 (1): 1–78.Google Scholar

Pritchett, C. Herman. 1948. The Roosevelt Court: A Study in Judicial Politics and Values, 1937–1947. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar

Reiter, Keramet Ann. 2012. “The Most Restrictive Alternative: A Litigation History of Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons, 1960–2006.” In Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, edited by Sarat, Austin, 71–124. Bingley: Emerald Group.Google Scholar

Resnik, Judith. 2016.“Lawyers’ Ethics Beyond the Vanishing Trial: Unrepresented Claimants, De Facto Aggregations, Arbitration Mandates, and Privatized Processes.” Fordham Law Review 85 (5): 1899.Google Scholar

Roma, Elizabeth. 2011. “Mandatory Arbitration Clauses in Employment Contracts and the Need for Meaningful Judicial Review.” Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law 12 (3): 5.Google Scholar

Rubin, Ashley T. 2015. “A Neo‐Institutional Account of Prison Diffusion.” Law & Society Review 49 (2): 365–400.Google Scholar

Schoenfeld, Heather. 2010. “Mass Incarceration and the Paradox of Prison Conditions Litigation.” Law & Society Review 44 (3‐4): 731–68.Google Scholar

Schlanger, Margo and Shay, Giovanna. 2009. “Preserving the Rule of Law in America’s Jails and Prisons: The Case for Amending the Prison Litigation Reform Act.” Journal of Constitutional Law 11 (1): 139–54.Google Scholar

Segal, Jeffrey A. and Cover, Albert D.. 1989. “Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices.” American Political Science Review 83 (2): 557–65.Google Scholar

Katherine Van Wezel, Stone. 1995. “Mandatory arbitration of individual employment rights: the yellow dog contract of the 1990s.” Denver University Law Review 73: 1017–50.Google Scholar

Stubbs, Jonathan K. 2016. “Demographic History of Federal Judicial Appointments by Sex and Race: 1789–2016, A.” Berkeley La Raza Law Journal 26: 92–128.Google Scholar

Sturm, Susan P. 1979. “Mastering Intervention in Prisons.” Yale Law Journal 88 (5): 1062–91.Google Scholar

Swearingen, Van. 2008. “Imprisoning Rights: The Failure of Negotiated Governance in the Prison Inmate Grievance Process.” California Law Review 96 (5): 1353–82.Google Scholar

Talesh, Shauhin A. 2015. “Legal Intermediaries: How Insurance Companies Construct the Meaning of Compliance with Antidiscrimination Laws.” Law & Policy 37 (2): 209–39.Google Scholar

Thorp, Cary D., Jr. 1973. “Fair Employment Practices: The Compliance Jungle.” Personnel Journal 52 (7): 642–49.Google Scholar

Weick, Karl E. 1976. “Educational Organizations as Loosely Coupled Systems.” Administrative Science Quarterly 21 (1): 1–19.Google Scholar

Wahlbeck, Paul J., Spriggs, James F., and Maltzman, Forrest. 1998. “Marshalling the Court: Bargaining and Accommodation on the United States Supreme Court.” American Journal of Political Science 294–315.Google Scholar

Cases

Burlington Industries v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742 (1998).

Costello v. Wainwright, 397 F. Supp. 20, M.D. Fla. (1975).

Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775 (1998).

Furnco Construction v. Waters, 438 U.S. 567 (1978).

Grubb v. W.A. Foote Memorial Hospital, Inc., 741 F.2d 1486 (6th Cir. 1984).

Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517 (1984).

Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987).

Verniero v. Airforce Academy School District No. 20, 705 F2d. 388, (10th Cir. 1983).

Widmar v. Sun Chemical Corp., 772 F.3d 457, 464 (7th Cir. 2014).

Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539 (1974).

Book contents

10 - Judicial Deference in the Modern State

Summary

Access options

References

References

Cases

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive