Rotating opinion assignment makes assigned judges unusually influential on appellate panels
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. Under this system, the judge assigned the opinion tends to be far more knowledgeable about the case than his or her colleagues, and they therefore may defer to the assigned judge’s view of how it should be decided. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1597
Because all 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. Under this system, the judge assigned the opinion tends to be far more knowledgeable about the case than his or her colleagues, and they therefore may defer to the assigned judge’s view of how it should be decided. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 959
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to ch73 notes on how conference discussion and opinion assignment shape Supreme Court outcomes; a useful institutional-design comparator for court structure. — connects to: Judicial decisions result from attitudes, role conceptions, and institutional constraints interacting together. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1286; Group interaction only marginally changes judges’ established voting patterns — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2623; Observational judicial bias findings can be confounded by case sorting upstream of the judge — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 775 (+2 more)
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1597; G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 959
Broader Connections
- Group interaction only marginally changes judges’ established voting patterns
#contradicts(0.80) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2623 - Observational judicial bias findings can be confounded by case sorting upstream of the judge
#responds-to(0.78) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 775 - Judicial decisions result from attitudes, role conceptions, and institutional constraints interacting together.
#expands(0.75) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1286