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I understand entirely the desire of everyone to want to know the views that I might subscribe to personally, and get me to make commitments about how I'd rule in future cases. . . . I'm not saying there's any improper questions. There are only improper answers. And as a judge, as a sitting judge, I'm bound by cano[n]s of ethics. . . . Those cano[n]s are important. They're important to me because if--if I did make a bunch of campaign promises here, what's that mean to the independent judiciary? What does that mean to the litigants in front of it? What does that mean for the future of this country? Those things are important to me, and there's a long line of judges who come before me and this is an unbroken chain and I don't want to be the weak link. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decision making in the U.S. courts of appeals occurs primarily in three-judge panels. A substantial number of cases are decided by panels that include a judge who is a district court judge serving temporarily on the appeals bench. This means that court of appeals decision making is often a function of small groups with temporary members. Here, we examine whether designated district court judges behave differently than their court of appeals colleagues when they cast their votes in cases they are deciding as members of three-judge appellate panels. In doing so, we suggest a profitable direction for theory building vis-à-vis judicial decision making. Our analysis of the ideological direction of the votes judges cast, as well as the variance in those votes, indicates that judges on three-judge panels are influenced by the preferences of their fellow panelists, and that designated district court judges, while no more variable than their court of appeals colleagues, are more susceptible to the influence of their peers than are regular members of the courts of appeals in a nontrivial number of cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the fact that scholars of judicial politics have developed reasonably well-specified models of the voting behavior of US. Supreme Court justices, little attention has been paid to influences on the consistency of the choices justices make. Aside from the methodological problems associated with failure to account for heteroskedasticity with regard to the justices' voting behavior, I argue that variance in judicial choice is also of theoretical import. Simply put, by uncovering influences on the stability of judicial choice, a more complete understanding of judicial decision making is provided. I explore this possibility by developing a theoretical framework that identifies influences on the consistency of judicial choice, which are then subjected to empirical testing. I show that the stability of judicial decision making is affected by attitudinal and strategic factors, as well as the Court's informational environment. The result is a more fully integrated model of Supreme Court decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international environment influences domestic politics, particularly during times of war. The traditional governmental response to such crises is to curtail the civil rights and liberties of Americans in the name of national security. Often, challenges to these restrictive policies find their way into the federal court system. However, little is known about the systematic effects of these conflicts on the choices jurists make. To redress this deficiency, we investigate whether international conflicts influence the decision making of federal district-court judges by examining the choices those judges make during periods of both war and peace. In addition, we consider whether male and female jurists react differently to periods of international unrest. We find that female judges do respond to wars, deciding cases more liberally than in peacetime, but male judges exhibit no response. As such, our results suggest that gender is an important consideration in evaluating the judicial response to war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disputes involving the boundaries of state versus federal power make up a substantial portion of the U.S. Supreme Court's docket and have undergone extensive analysis. Yet, the conventional wisdom regarding the justices' choices in these cases is that they are highly inconsistent. I argue that this is primarily a function of the failure of scholars to develop a comprehensive model of the justices' federalism decision making. To remedy this, I introduce an integrated model of the individual justices' choices in these cases, which is then subjected to empirical testing in the Rehnquist Court era (1986-2004). I explore a host of determinants of the justices' decision making, including attitudinal, institutional, legal, and personal attributes, as well as the role of organized interests in the Court. The findings reveal that the choices justices make in these cases are not as discordant as most commentators suggest. Rather, they are relatively predictable through the application of an integrated model of judicial choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a preliminary analysis and research framework on variable voting behavior on the Supreme Court in the U.S. Attitudinal and legal approaches to Supreme Court decision making; Assumption that judges' voting behavior is rational and stable; Implications on studies of the justice system.