Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T00:46:16.670Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Transmission of Legal Precedent among State Supreme Courts in the Twenty-First Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Rachael K. Hinkle  and
Michael J. Nelson
Rachael K. Hinkle*
Affiliation:
University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA
Michael J. Nelson
Affiliation:
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
*
Rachael K. Hinkle, University at Buffalo, SUNY, 520 Park Hall, North Campus, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA. Email: rkhinkle@buffalo.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Theories of legislative policy diffusion are well formed and extensively tested, but scholars know far less about the diffusion of legal policy and reasoning. Three decades ago, Caldeira's “The Transmission of Legal Precedent: A Study of State Supreme Courts” examined this topic, but the intervening decades have been marked by considerable changes in both technology and the institutional structure of state supreme courts. We explore the effect of these changes by explaining modern translegal judicial communication in the United States. Relying on an original dataset encompassing every citation in every legal decision made by all 52 state supreme courts in 2010, we explore the effect of the proximity of two states and the prestige of the cited court on how frequently state high courts use one another's precedents. We find evidence that both proximity and prestige increase cross-state citations.

Keywords

judicial politicsjudicial behaviorpublic lawpolicy diffusionlegal diffusion
Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 2016 , pp. 391 - 410
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2016

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

Berry, Frances Stokes, and Berry, William D.. 1990. “State Lottery Adoptions as Policy Innovations: An Event History Analysis.” American Political Science Review 84 (2): 395–415..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, William D., Ringquist, Evan J., Fording, Richard C., and Hanson, Russell L.. 1998. “Measuring Citizen and Government Ideology in the American States, 1960-93.” American Journal of Political Science 42:327–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonica, Adam, and Woodruff, Michael J.. 2015. “A Common-Space Measure of State Supreme Court Ideology.” Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 31:472–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brace, Paul, and Hall, Melinda Gann. 1995. “Studying Courts Comparatively: The View from the American States.” Political Research Quarterly 48:5–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braman, Eileen, and Nelson, Thomas E.. 2007. “Mechanism of Motivated Reasoning? Analogical Perception in Discrimination Disputes.” American Journal of Political Science 51 (4): 940–56..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A. 1983. “On the Reputation of State Supreme Courts.” Political Behavior 5 (1): 83–108..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A. 1985. “The Transmission of Legal Precedent: A Study of State Supreme Courts.” American Political Science Review 79 (1): 178–94..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A. 1988. “Legal Precedent: Structures of Communication between State Supreme Courts.” Social Networks 10:29–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canes-Wrone, Brandice, Clark, Tom S., and Kelly, Jason P.. 2014. “Judicial Selection and Death Penalty Decisions.” American Political Science Review 108 (1): 23–39..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canon, Bradley C., and Baum, Lawrence. 1981. “Patterns of Adoption of Tort Law Innovations: An Application of Diffusion Theory to Judicial Doctrines.” American Political Science Review 75:975–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choi, Stephen J., Gulati, Mitu, and Posner, Eric A.. 2009. “Judicial Evaluations and Information Forcing: Ranking State High Courts and Their Judges.” Duke Law Review 58:1313–81.Google Scholar
Danner, Richard A. 2003. “Contemporary and Future Directions in American Legal Research: Responding to the Threat of the Available.” International Journal of Legal Information 31 (2): 179–97..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denniston, Mark W. 2014. Dialogue among State Supreme Courts: Advancing State Constitutionalism. El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing.Google Scholar
Dubois, Philip L. 1988. “The Illusion of Judicial Consensus Revisited: Partisan Conflict on an Intermediate State Court of Appeals.” American Journal of Political Science 32 (4): 946–67..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenberg, Theodore, and Miller, Geoffrey P.. 2009. “Reversal, Dissent, and the Variability in State Supreme Courts: The Centrality of Jurisdictional Source.” Boston University Law Review 89:1451–504.Google Scholar
Friedman, Lawrence M., Kagan, Robert A., Cartwright, Bliss, and Wheeler, Stanton. 1981. “State Supreme Courts: A Century of Style and Citation.” Stanford Law Review 33 (5): 773–818..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glick, Henry Robert, and Vines, Kenneth N.. 1973. State Court Systems. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, 798 N.E.2d 941 (Massachusetts 2003)Google Scholar
Grossback, Lawrence J., Nicholson-Crotty, Sean, and Peterson, David A. M.. 2004. “Ideology and Learning in Policy Diffusion.” American Politics Research 32 (5): 521–45..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Matthew E. K., and Windett, Jason H.. 2013. “New Data on State Supreme Court Cases.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly 13 (4): 427–45..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Peter. 1982. “Structural Change in the Communication of Precedent among State Supreme Courts, 1870-1970.” Social Networks 4:201–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Peter. 1985. “Difficult Cases and the Display of Authority.” Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 1 (1): 209–21..Google Scholar
Hinkle, Rachael K. 2015a. “Into the Words: Using Statutory Text to Explore the Impact of Federal Courts on State Policy Diffusion.” American Journal of Political Science 59:1002–1021.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinkle, Rachael K. 2015b. “Legal Constraint in the U.S. Courts of Appeals.” Journal of Politics 77:721–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karch, Andrew. 2007. Democratic Laboratories: Policy Diffusion among the American States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, David, and Morrisroe, Darby. 1999. “The Prestige and Influence of Individual Judges on the U.S. Courts of Appeals.” Journal of Legal Studies 28 (2): 371–91..Google Scholar
Manz, William H. 1995. “The Citation Practices of the New York Court of Appeals, 1850-1993.” Buffalo Law Review 43:121–79.Google Scholar
Manz, William H. 2001. “The Citation Practices of the New York Court of Appeals: A Millennium Update.” Buffalo Law Review 49:1273–313.Google Scholar
Merryman, John Hendry. 1977. “Toward a Theory of Citations: An Empirical Study of the Citation Practice of the California Supreme Court in 1950, 1960, and 1970.” Southern California Law Review 50:381.Google Scholar
Mott, Rodney L. 1936. “Judicial Influence.” American Political Science Review 30 (2): 295–315..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mott, Rodney L., Albright, Spencer D., and Semmerling, Helen R.. 1933. “Judicial Personnel.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 167:143–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, Stuart S. 1962. “Sociometric Relations among American Courts.” Southwestern Social Science Quarterly 43 (2): 136–42..Google Scholar
Nelson, Michael J., Caufield, Rachel Paine, and Martin, Andrew D.. 2013. “OH, MI: A Note on Empirical Examinations of Judicial Elections.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly 13:495–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owens, Ryan J. 2010. “The Separation of Powers and Supreme Court Agenda Setting.” American Journal of Political Science 54 (2): 412–27..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A. 1997. “Separation-of-Powers Games in the Positive Theory of Congress and Courts.” American Political Science Review 91 (1): 28–44..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spriggs, James F. II, and Hansford, Thomas G.. 2000. “Measuring Legal Change: The Reliability and Validity of Shepard's Citations.” Political Research Quarterly 53 (2): 327–41..Google Scholar
Squire, Peverill. 2008. “Measuring the Professionalization of U.S. State Courts of Last Resort.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly 8 (3): 223–38..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taber, Charles S., and Lodge, Milton. 2006. “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs.” American Journal of Political Science 50 (3): 755–69..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varnum v. Brien, 763 N.W.2d 862 (Iowa 2009)Google Scholar
Volden, Craig. 2006. “States as Policy Laboratories: Emulating Success in the Children's Health Insurance Program.” American Journal of Political Science 50 (2): 294–312..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Jack L. 1969. “The Diffusion of Innovations among the American States.” American Political Science Review 63 (3): 880–99..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walsh, David J. 1997. “On the Meaning and Pattern of Legal Citations: Evidence from State Wrongful Discharge Precedent Cases.” Law & Society Review 31 (2): 337–61..CrossRefGoogle Scholar