Research

A large empirical literature examines how judges’ traits affect how cases get resolved. This literature has led many to conclude that judges matter for case outcomes. But how much do they matter? Existing empirical findings understate the true extent of judicial influence over case outcomes since standard estimation techniques hide some disagreement among judges. We devise a machine learning method to reveal additional sources of disagreement. Applying this method to the Ninth Circuit, we estimate that at least 38% of cases could be decided differently based solely on the panel they were assigned to.

We analyze a formal model of social contact and discrimination in the context of policing. Officers decide how to interact with members of two social groups while working and while socializing. The officers do not fully distinguish between their experiences of crime across these two contexts (“coarse thinking”), so they end up with excessively positive views of groups they socialize with and excessively negative views of those they police. This creates dual feedback loops as officers choose to socialize more with groups they view favorably and over-police those they view as “more criminal.” Interventions that induce positive contact with an overpoliced group can mitigate the officer’s discriminatory policing. However, this beneficial effect only persists if the policy intervention creates sustained positive contact. Our results provide a novel theoretical microfoundation for the contact hypothesis and highlight why effects of many policy interventions aimed at increasing positive contact may be short-lived.

Are federal lawsuits resolved differently based on the race or gender of the judges assigned to hear them? Recent empirical research posits that women and judges of color decide cases more liberally, at least in some identity-salient areas of law. However, these studies analyze small numbers of cases and judges, and use research designs that limit their causal interpretations. Using an original dataset of all civil rights cases filed in 20 federal district courts over multiple decades and a strong causal identification strategy, we find that assignment of cases to judges of color or women has no statistically significant effect on case outcomes among Democratic appointees. However, it causes more conservative outcomes among Republican appointees. We explain these results with a theory of bargaining over judicial appointments in which Republican presidents take advantage of Democrats’ preference for diversity on the bench to appoint more conservative judges.

Public meetings to consider new housing proposals often feature visible and vocal opposition from neighboring residents, creating a perception that these meetings impede the growth of the housing supply contributing to inequality. We analyze a model where residents can legally challenge a developer’s housing proposal. A public meeting serves as a critical tool for developers to identify potential litigants, enabling them to adjust proposals and avoid legal action. Interestingly, developers prefer meetings dominated by opponents since it is easier to identify potentially litigious neighbors. Contrary to common belief, our findings suggest that public meetings dominated by NIMBY opponents can increase housing supply by fostering compromise projects. This challenges the prevailing conventional wisdom that unrepresentative meetings significantly restrict housing development. Our analysis instead focuses attention on the threat of litigation as the key driver of the undersupply of housing.

A large economic literature studies whether racial disparities in policing are explained by animus or by beliefs about group crime rates. But what if these beliefs are incorrect? We analyse a model where officers form beliefs using crime statistics, but do not properly account for the fact that they will detect more crime in more heavily policed communities. This creates a feedback loop where officers over-police groups that they (incorrectly) believe exhibit high crime rates. This inferential mistake can exacerbate discrimination even among officers with no animus and who sincerely believe that disparities are driven by real differences in crime rates.

Governments routinely decide to involve special interests in the development of public policy, a practice that can distort policy outcomes away from the public interest. Many are concerned that these policy distortions increase when special interest aligned individuals—such as lobbyists, activists or industry insiders—go into government. Using a formal model that centers the role of policymaking capacity in the development of policy, we demonstrate this is not always what happens. Our analysis provides two core insights. First, when an individual from a special interest group goes into government, this can paradoxically reduce the special interest’s influence over public policy. Second, this individual has an endogenous incentive to enter government even though doing so weakens the special interest, whose preferences the individual shares. The model suggests that politicians’ efforts to stop the practice of hiring individuals from special interest groups can counterintuitively increase special interest influence over politics.

Using an original data set of around 70,000 civil rights cases heard by nearly 200 judges, we study the effect of presidential appointments to federal district courts. We provide the first causal estimates of whether lawsuits end differently depending on their assignment to either a Democratic or a Republican appointed judge. We show Republican appointees cause fewer settlements and more dismissals, favoring defendants by around 5 percentage points. We estimate a similarly sized effect for a sample of civil rights appeals heard in the Ninth Circuit, raising questions about the conventional wisdom that politics matters more at higher levels of the judicial hierarchy. We also find that the effect in district courts has increased over time. For cases filed during the Obama presidency, Republican appointees caused pro-defendant outcomes in 7.4% more cases than Democratic appointees. Our results suggest that district courts are an important—although neglected—subject of research for political scientists.

Political leaders face many agency problems, such as managing subordinates who may not honestly report information. One potential solution to these problems is kompromat: the threat to release compromising information. Using a cheap talk model, we demonstrate how kompromat can improve communication, making both principal and agent better off. However, using kompromat to solve an agency problem generates two costs. First, its mere existence means it may leak inadvertently. Second, because kompromat works by threatening the reputation of subordinates, common knowledge that an organization uses kompromat might be costly even if it is never leaked. These possibilities may foreclose all communication from a subordinate who would have provided truthful information in the absence of kompromat.

Certain features of the legal system, such as litigant-driven appeals and random assignment of judges to cases, are supposed to prevent biased and error-prone decision-making by judges. I analyze a formal model illustrating this is not always true, even when judges are personally unbiased. First, an unbiased trial judge may make systematically biased judgments when that judge’s decisions can be appealed by a losing litigant. If the judge is sufficiently reversal averse, this bias favors higher resource litigants. Second, litigant-driven appeals allow unbiased judges to put less effort into resolving cases correctly. Third, when unbiased judges are assigned randomly to cases, they will produce more errors than a case assignment system allowing trial judges more freedom to select cases. The results confirm one contention of “team models” of judicial hierarchy (that litigant behavior is important) while also demonstrating the limits of another (that judicial hierarchies minimize adjudication errors).

How much do trial judges influence the law in the United States? I analyze a model of adjudication by a trial judge who engages in fact finding before deciding a case, but whose decision may be reversed. The model makes three broad points. First, it provides an informational rationale for ex post deference to biased trial judges that does not require an ex ante commitment by an appellate court to a standard of review. Second, it shows how procedural discretion can bring biased trial judges’ rulings closer to appellate doctrine despite enabling trial judges to “get their way” more often. Third, de facto law as represented by trial judges’ case-by-case adjudication will differ substantially from de jure law. As long as there are not too many extremist trial judges, de facto law will reflect the predispositions of trial judges, not legal doctrine.