Paper Abstract
1109. Alma Cohen, The Pervasive Influence of Political Composition on Circuit Court Decisions, 02/202410.
Abstract: Using a novel and massive dataset of about 650,000 circuit court decisions, this paper empirically investigates the significance of the political affiliations of circuit court judges, as proxied by the party of the appointing president.
The analysis shows that these affiliations can help predict circuit court decisions in case categories that together represent more than 90% of all circuit court cases. The association between political affiliation and outcomes is thus pervasive in the vast universe of circuit court decisions, and it is not limited to the ideologically salient cases on which previous research has focused.
In particular, I find an association between political affiliations and outcomes in each of six categories of cases between parties that could be perceived by judges to have unequal power. In each of these categories, the more Democratic judges a panel has, the higher the odds of a panel decision siding with the seemingly weaker party.
Furthermore, political affiliation is also associated with outcomes in the large set of civil cases between parties that seemingly are of equal power. In these cases, the more Democratic judges on the panel, the lower the odds of a panel deferring to the lower-court decision.
The paper resolves the long-standing debate on the extent to which the political affiliations are associated with decisions in the circuit courts of appeals. I conclude by discussing the implications, both for understanding the evolving body of circuit court decisions and for assessing the rules and arrangements that govern such courts.