Collegial courts make decisions through group conference and majority-coalition opinion assignment

Evidence

Because appellate courts are multimember courts, appellate decision making necessarily has a group dimension. The process of decision making on many appellate courts resembles that on the U.S. Supreme Court; that is, the judges meet in conference, and the writing of the opinion of the court is assigned to a member of the majority coalition following the vote in conference. A few state appellate courts rotate opinion assignments, so that a judge is assigned the opinion in a case even before it is argued. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1597

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the mechanics of opinion assignment, a core judicial-process concept.
• XREF: connects to: Appellate judging is collaborative teamwork while trial judging is solitary authority — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 575; The chief justice assigns majority opinions or yields to the senior associate when dissenting — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 946; The assigned justice must craft an opinion attractive enough to hold five votes. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1569 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Collegiality only marginally shifts judges’ settled votes #contradicts (0.93) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1338
• Judicial decisions result from attitudes, role conceptions, and institutional constraints interacting together. #expands (0.92) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1286
• Opinion-drafting dialogue among appellate judges shapes or narrows their collective decisions #qualifies (0.90) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 577
• Group discussion technique captures opinions as they form rather than correcting them afterward #corroborates (0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2023
• Group interaction only marginally changes judges’ established voting patterns #contradicts (0.87) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2623
• Rotating opinion assignment makes assigned judges unusually influential on appellate panels #complicates (0.85) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1597
• Heterogeneous multi-judge panels could offset individual judicial bias #qualifies (0.80)
• Partisan diversity on a court makes dissenting opinions more frequent #complicates (0.80) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1599
• Written opinions and the craft of judging constrain judicial value-based decision making. #complicates (0.80) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2543
• Judges’ personal attitudes systematically shape their case votes. #complicates (0.80) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2579
• Party affiliation reliably predicts how state court judges decide cases #complicates (0.75) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 432
• Political selection fills the courts with judges holding established partisan views #complicates (0.75) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2571