The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice

Epstein, Lee; Landes, William M.; Posner, Richard A.

ISBN 10: 0674049896 / ISBN 13: 9780674049895

Published by Harvard University Press (edition Illustrated), 2013

About this Item

It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Seller Inventory # 0674049896-8-1

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (edition Illustrated)
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674049896
• ISBN 13: 9780674049895
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: Illustrated.
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Judges play a central role in the American legal system, but their behavior as decision-makers is not well understood, even among themselves. The system permits judges to be quite secretive (and most of them are), so indirect methods are required to make sense of their behavior. Here, a political scientist, an economist, and a judge work together to construct a unified theory of judicial decision-making. Using statistical methods to test hypotheses, they dispel the mystery of how judicial decisions in district courts, circuit courts, and the Supreme Court are made.

The authors derive their hypotheses from a labor-market model, which allows them to consider judges as they would any other economic actors: as self-interested individuals motivated by both the pecuniary and non-pecuniary aspects of their work. In the authors' view, this model describes judicial behavior better than either the traditional “legalist” theory, which sees judges as automatons who mechanically apply the law to the facts, or the current dominant theory in political science, which exaggerates the ideological component in judicial behavior. Ideology does figure into decision-making at all levels of the federal judiciary, the authors find, but its influence is not uniform. It diminishes as one moves down the judicial hierarchy from the Supreme Court to the courts of appeals to the district courts. As The Behavior of Federal Judges demonstrates, the good news is that ideology does not extinguish the influence of other components in judicial decision-making. Federal judges are not just robots or politicians in robes.

About the Authors

Lee Epstein is Provost Professor of Law and Political Science and Rader Family Trustee Chair in Law at the University of Southern California.

William M. Landes is Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School.

Richard A. Posner retired as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017. He was previously a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.