Legal doctrine constrains lower courts far more than the Supreme Court
Evidence
It would be a mistake to assume, however, that what is true for the Supreme Court is true for other courts and other issues. There has been somewhat less research focused on state courts and lower federal courts than there has been on the Supreme Court, but the body of that research is still considerable. And when we look at the conclusions of that research, we see that legal doctrine appears to play a considerably larger role in judicial decision-making than the more extreme of the Realists supposed. Although the self-reporting of judges probably exaggerates the effect of formal law on their decisions, the admittedly oversimplified conclusion that emerges from the research is that even in lower courts a range of nonlegal factors plays a larger role than the traditional model supposes, but that legal factors explain considerably more of lower court than of Supreme Court decision-making. — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 257
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to empirical political-science literature on judicial behavior and the attitudinalist model discussed in para 256. — connects to: The Supreme Court’s seventy-one annual decisions are systematically unrepresentative of how law works — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 39; Judicial discretion is channeled by constraints, not eliminated. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 188; The Supreme Court’s docket has shrunk dramatically while its discretionary power grew — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 369 (+2 more)
Related
- The Supreme Court’s seventy-one annual decisions are systematically unrepresentative of how law works (similarity 0.82)
- Lower federal courts shape even the most controversial cases before Supreme Court review. (similarity 0.81)
- The Supreme Court’s docket has shrunk dramatically while its discretionary power grew (similarity 0.80)
- Supreme Court shifts can be explained by either legal doctrine or judicial politics. (similarity 0.80)