Commitment and Cooperation on High Courts (A Cross-Country Examination of Institutional Constraints on Judges)

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Description
Judicial decision-making is ideally impartial. In reality, judges are influenced by many different factors, including institutional context, ideological commitment, fellow justices on a panel, and personal preferences. Empirical literature in this area increasingly analyzes this complex collection of factors in isolation, when a larger sample size of comparative institutional contexts can help assess the impact of the procedures, norms, and rules on key institutional decisions, such as how appeals are decided. The book explains how the answers to the following institutional questions largely determine  the influence of political preferences of individual judges, and the degree of cooperation among judges at a given point in time.
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1.     Commitment and Cooperation on High Courts
        Commitment: Judges and Their Personal
        Cooperation: Judges and Their Colleagues
        Combining Commitment and Cooperation
        Are Commitment and Cooperation Related?
        Why Commitment and Cooperation?
        Comparing High Courts
            United States    
            Australia        
            Canada    
            India
            United Kingdom
            Conclusion     
2.    How Do Judges Decide?
       Theories of How Judges Decide            
       What Influences a Judges Decision?    
            Policy Preferences
            Reputation
            Identity
            Financial/Material Compensation
            Leisure    
        Institutional Wedges 
        Judges, the Law, and Institutions
3.    Planting the Seed: Choosing High Court Judges
       Choosing the Bench
           Executive Power    
            "With the Advice and Consent": Combining the Executive and Legislature
             The Committee Approach
            Letting the Judges Decide
            Is There a Connection between the Appointments Process and Decision-Making?
            Do Political Processes Lead to Political Judges?
        Are Judges Dispersed?
        Are Judges Consistent Across Areas of Law?
            Do Appointers Replicate Themselves?
            Does a Balanced Process Lead to Cooperative Judge
        Judging and the Appointment Process
4.    Who Hears the Particular Appeal?    
        Choosing the Panel
            No Discretion
            High Discretion    
            Mixed Structures    
        Gaming or Efficiency? Rival Hypotheses of Panel Setting
        Managerial Panel Selection
        Does the Choice of Panels Influence Outcomes of Appeals?
         Strategic Panel Selection
        Setting Panels
5.    Do Judges Care About Others?
       Other Judges on the Panel
        A Judges Role
            Freshman Judge
            The Chief Justice
        Other Branches of Government    
        Judges and Other Actors
6.    Slipping Through the Screen: How Do Courts Choose the Cases
        They Hear?
        Who Gets to Decide Which Cases to Hear?
        How Do Judges Decide Which Cases to Hear?
        Workload: How Will Accepting a Particular Case Affect a Judge's
        Workload?
            Cue Theory: What Kind of Case Is This?
            Simple Ideology: Do I Want to Overturn This Decision?
            Sophisticated Ideology Can I win?
            Which Factors Matter?
7.    The Influence of the Parties on Judges: Accuracy or Affiliation?
        Who Is Before the Court?
        Accuracy or Affiliation?
            Accuracy
            Affiliation
        How Do Judges Relate to the Litigants?
            Judges Are More Likely to Vote in Favor of the Litigant with the Greatest
            Resources, Sometimes
            Judges Do Not Clearly Tend to Vote in Line with Like-Minded
            Litigants
How Do Judges Relate to Interveners?
Do Parties Make a Difference?
8.    Norms, Leadership, and Consensus
       Do Differences in Policy Preferences Influence Dissents?
           Direct Measures of Ideological Difference
           Does Complexity or Controversy Matter?
       How Important Is Workload to Dissent?
       Norms and the Chief Justice
       Norms and Ideology
9.    Conclusion
Appendices   
    1.    The Data
    2.    Influences on Judges'Votes
    3.    Dissent Analysis
Index
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Author Details
Benjamin Alarie is the Osler Chair in business Law at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law. He is Past-President of the Canadian Law and Economics Association. He works primarily in taxation law and judicial decision-making and he has published in the American business Law Journal, The British Tax Review, the Canadian Business Law Journal, the Canadian Tax Journal, and many other academic journals. He is co-author of several editions of Canadian income Tax Law, Prior to joining the Faculty in 2004, Alarie Clerked for Madam Justice Louise Arbour at the Supreme Court of Canada.
Andrew J. Green is Associate Professor at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law. His work focuses on environmental law, international trade (how international trade rules constrain countries' ability to implement environmental policy), administrative law, and the role of law in fostering individuals environmental Law Review, the Virginia Environmental Law Review, the Supreme Court Law Review, and the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, among others.
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