Integrated Models of Judicial Dissent

TLDR

The neo‑institutional approach emphasizes the interaction of individual preferences, case facts, and environmental forces with institutional rules and structures. This paper presents the first integrated models of judicial dissent at the individual level. The authors synthesize attitudinal, jurisprudential, and contextual elements within a neo‑institutional framework and analyze individual death‑penalty votes from 1980‑1988 in six state supreme courts using pooled PROBIT models. Justices’ dissent decisions reflect more than mere attitudinal disagreement, case‑fact reactions, or contextual responses; instead, dissents arise from the interaction of these variables with institutional rules, confirming that institutional arrangements critically condition personal attributes, case characteristics, and contextual factors on judicial choice.

Abstract

This paper presents the first integrated models of judicial dissent at the individual level. The models synthesize elements derived from attitudinal, jurisprudential, and contextual approaches to the study of judicial behavior by application of a neo-institutional perspective. The neo-institutional approach emphasizes the interaction of individual preferences, case facts, and environmental forces with institutional rules and structures. Individual judicial votes on death penalty cases from 1980 through 1988 in six state supreme courts are examined employing pooled PROBIT analysis. The results indicate that justices' decisions to dissent reflect significantly more than mere attitudinal disagreement, reactions to various types of case facts or responses to contextual forces. Rather, dissents are the product of all of these types of variables interacting with institutional rules and arrangements. As neo-institutionalism suggests, institutional arrangements serve to condition the effects of personal attributes, case characteristics and contextual variables on judicial choice and as such are critical determinants of the judicial vote.