More than Ideology: Conservative–Liberal Identity and Receptivity to Political Cues

To many commentators and social scientists, Americans’ stances on political issues are to an important extent driven by an underlying conservative–liberal ideological dimension. Self-identification as conservative vs. liberal is regarded as a marker of this dimension. However, past research has not thoroughly distinguished between ideological identity (a self-categorization) and ideology (an integrated value system). This research evaluates the thesis that conservative–liberal identity functions as a readiness to adopt beliefs and attitudes about newly politicized issues that one is told are consistent with the socially prescribed meaning of conservatism–liberalism. In Study 1, conservative–liberal identity, measured in 2000, had an independent prospective effect on support for invading Iraq in 2002 and support for the Iraq war in 2004, controlling for substantive ideology, party identity, and demographics. In Study 2, conservative- and liberal-identifiers adopted stances on farm subsidy policy based on randomly varied cues indicating which ideological group supports which stance. This cue-based influence was mediated by adoption of attitude-supportive beliefs. Discussion addresses the joint impact of political discourse and identity-based social influence on the organization of political attitudes.     

The politics of abortion in the House of Representatives in 1976

The discussion in the U. S. Congress preceeding the passage of the 1976 Hyde Amendment, prohibiting the use of Medicaid funds for abortions, was described and the results of a multivariate analysis of the factors influencing the votes on the amendment in the House of Representatives were presented. Between June 24-August 10, 1976 there were 3 roll call votes on the amendment in the House of Representatives and during this period support for the amendment increased from 54%-69%. Multiple classification analysis was used to analyze the relative influence of 11 independent variables on the voting behavior of the representatives. The 11 variables included 1) the age, educational level, sex, and religious affliation of the representative; 2) the representative's party affliation, degree of constituent support, and previous voting record on liberal issues; and 3) the average income, racial composition, geographical location, and the % of urban residents in the representative's district. The factor which served as the best indicator of the representative's vote on the amendment was the representative's previous voting record on liberal issues. Those with more liberal voting records tended to vote against the amendment and those with more conservative voting records tended to vote for the amendment. The 2nd best predictor of amendment votes was the religious affliation of the representative. Catholic representatives, compared to Protestant and Jewish representatives, were more likely to support the amendment. Geographical location of the representative's district was a moderate indicator of the representative's vote on the amendment. Representatives from the south were more likely to support the amendment. The degree of constituent support for the representative in his own district was also a moderate indicator of the representatives vote on the amendment. The 11 factors together accounted for 1/3 of the votes.     

Approaches to Studying Policy Representation

Some studies of policy representation test hypotheses about the relationship between citizens' views and elites' positions on multiple issues by proceeding one issue at a time. Others summarize citizens' and elites' preferences with “ideology scores” and test hypotheses with these. I show that approach is flawed. It misinterprets citizens' ideology scores as summaries of policy preferences, but these scores actually measure ideological consistency across areas: how often citizens' ideal policies are liberal or conservative. Examples show how attending to this distinction overturns conventional wisdom: legislators appear similarly moderate as citizens, not more extreme; however, politically engaged citizens appear especially moderate.     

An analysis of congressional health policy voting in the 1970s

This paper analyzes nine health policy votes in the U.S. House of Representatives. The votes all occurred between 1973 and 1980 and include such issues as health planning, health maintenance organizations, cost containment, and professional standards review organizations. The objective of this analysis is to examine the independent contribution of variables indigenous to health issues while controlling for party identification and ideology. The influence of health providers, measured by the effect of the number of state medical association members in each state, is significant in the findings. The state and local share of Medicaid expenses is also significant in explaining several votes. Contributions from political action committees were not important until 1979, when the rising costs of campaigns gave them more influence, and when our measures of their influence improved. By the time Congress voted in 1979 on hospital cost containment legislation, the PAC variable surpassed even the AMA variable in importance.     

The Influence of Conference Committees on Policy Outcomes

This article examines the effect that the spatial location of conference committees relative to the parent bodies has on congressional policy outcomes. The article presents a theoretical model proposing that conferees choose policies that maximize their policy utility subject to the constraint of gaining House and Senate majorities on the conference report. I tested the model using conferences on bills associated with votes that generated liberal‐conservative divisions. The results confirm that, under specified conditions, conferees pull outcomes away from the parent bodies toward conferee preferences.     

Collegial Influence and Judicial Voting Change: The Effect of Membership Change on U.S. Supreme Court Justices

Understanding the source of voting changes by appellate judges provides an important window into the factors that shape the votes of the judges more generally. We argue that membership changes, by altering the collegial context in which judges make their choices, affect the information environment, long-term collegial considerations, and short-term strategic calculations. As a result, membership change should lead to greater uncertainty and more frequent voting changes among continuing justices in the term following a replacement. We test this proposition by looking at vote change by justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in two separate analyses: justices' votes on search-and-seizure cases since Mapp v. Ohio (1961) and on the progeny of Miranda v. Arizona (1966) . Our results support the argument that the collegial context helps explain changes in voting choices. Our analysis suggests that collegial considerations are an important component of judges' behavior and merit further evaluation in a cross-national context.     

The ideological bases and functions of contemporary juvenile law reform: The New York State experience

This paper reviews dominant crime control ideologies and relates these ideological assumptions to juvenile justice reform. Using New York State as a case study, the ideological basis of recent juvenile justice legislation is then reviewed through analysis of legislative debates. The debates indicate that the legal reforms represent the ascendance of conservative crime control ideology. The paper then examines the functions and effects of crime control ideology. It is argued that liberal and conservative crime control ideologies are part of a more general institutionalized thought structure dominant in American society. Key elements of this institutionalized thought structure include an emphasis on individualism, formal equality, and rationality. The net effect of the legal reforms, however, appears to be an increase in substantive inequality in the form of extended state control over poor, urban, minority youths. The paper concludes by suggesting that these ideologies function to offer apparent responses to the problem of crime in society without threatening existing distributions of power and wealth.     

When “Best Practices” Win,Employees Lose: Symbolic Compliance and Judicial Inference in Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Cases

This article provides a new account of employers' advantages over employees in federal employment discrimination cases. We analyze the effects of judicial deference, in which judges use institutionalized employment structures to infer nondiscrimination without scrutinizing those structures in any meaningful way. Using logistic regression to analyze a representative sample of judicial opinions in federal EEO cases during the first thirty‐five years after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, we find that when judges uncritically use the presence of organizational structures to reason about whether discrimination occurred, employers are much more likely to prevail. This pattern is especially pronounced in opinions written by liberal judges. In light of these findings, we offer recommendations for judges, lawyers, and policy makers—including legal academics—who seek to improve the accuracy and efficacy of employment discrimination adjudications.     

Strength in Numbers or Quality over Quantity? Examining the Importance of Criterion Measure Selection to Define Validity Groups in Performance Validity Test (PVT) Research

Mirroring clinical guidelines, recent Performance Validity Test (PVT) research emphasizes using ≥ 2 criterion PVTs to optimally identify validity groups when validating/cross-validating PVTs; however, even with multiple measures, the effect of which specific PVTs are used as criterion measures remains incompletely explored. This study investigated the accuracy of varying two-PVT combinations for establishing validity status and how adding a third PVT or applying more liberal failure cut-scores affects overall false-positive (FP)/-negative (FN) rates. Clinically referred veterans (N = 114; 30% clinically identified as invalid) completing a six-PVT protocol as during their evaluation were included. Concordance rates were calculated across all possible two-and three-PVT combinations at conservative and liberal cutoffs. Two-PVT combinations classified 72–91% of valid (0–4% FPs) and 17–74% of invalid (0–40% FNs) cases, and three-PVT combinations classified 67–86% of valid (0–6% FPs) and 57–97% of invalid (0–24% FNs) at conservative cutoffs. Liberal cutoffs classified 53–86% of valid (0–15% FPs) and 39–82% of invalid (0–30% FNs) cases for two-PVT combinations and 46–75% of valid (3–27% FPs) and 60–97% of invalid (0–17% FNs) cases for three-PVT combinations. Irrespective of whether a two-or three-PVT combination or conservative/liberal cutoffs were used, many valid and invalid cases failed only one PVT (3–68%).Two-PVT combinations produced high FNs and were less accurate than three-PVTs for detecting invalid cases, though variable accuracy was found within both types of combinations based on the specific PVTs in the combination. Thus, both PVT quantity and quality are important for accurate validity classification in research studies to ensure reliability and replicability of findings. Applying more liberal cutoffs yielded increased sensitivity, but with generally higher FPs yielding problematic specificity, particularly for three-PVT combinations.     

Party Unity in the Swiss Parliament: The Electoral Connection

This study investigates the connection between legislative and electoral politics in Switzerland. The authors postulate that party unity is higher in an election year, and more specifically in votes on issues that are important for the party platform and that are of greater visibility to voters. The authors analyse the entire voting record of the Swiss parliament (lower house) on legislative acts between 1996 and 2007, which consists of roll call votes as well as unpublished votes. The authors find a strong effect of elections on voting unity among certain parties, and also find encouraging support for the hypotheses that this effect is mediated by the visibility of the vote and related issue salience.     

The impact of race on criminal justice ideology: An examination of high school students

Research suggests that differences exist in the criminal justice ideology of Black and White Americans. For example, adult African Americans are more likely than their White counterparts to support criminal justice measures that address the root causes of crime. There has, however, been limited interest in exploring the criminal justice ideology of juveniles. Using survey data collected from 1,398 rural and suburban public high school students, the present study examined the influence of race on the criminal justice ideology of juveniles. The findings suggested that while Black teenagers are significantly more likely to hold a liberal crime control ideology and White teenagers are significantly more likely to hold a conservative ideology, confidence in the justice system to be fair strongly influences the beliefs of both groups.     

Judicial Decisionmaking and the Use of Panels in the Canadian Supreme Court and the South African Appellate Division

Research on the U.S. Supreme Court suggests that judges' decisions are influenced by their policy preferences. Moreover, judges behave strategically to facilitate outcomes that conform as close as possible to those preferences. We seek to generalize this assertion to judicial actors in two very diverse social systems: Canada in the post-Charter years and apartheid-era South Africa. Specifically, we analyze the use of panel assignments by the chief justices in both countries. We find that chief justices do behave strategically. Chief justices in both countries do not assign judges to panels randomly but rather are influenced by the tenure and ideology of the sitting judges and the issues presented in the case.     

Judicial Independence and Political Representation: Prussian Judges as Parliamentary Deputies, 1849–1913

The outrageous history of German judges during the Third Reich should not so structure historical research as to distract historians from examining their role in the nineteenth century. Prussian judges played an important role in electoral politics by serving as parliamentary deputies between 1849 and 1913. This essay poses and answers two questions: What was the political, legal, and social setting that led to judges sewing in parliament? And, why did their number decline after 1877? Theoretical discourses of separation of powers, construction of a Hegelian “general estate,” and independence of the judiciary converged with administrative‐legal‐constitutional developments in Prussia begun under the absolutism of the eighteenth century and professional and personal interests of judges to bring them into parliament, often as members of the liberal opposition. But success in the liberal project of building a national state, including legal reform, professionalization, and the advent of mass politics, reduced the need and attraction for judges in parliament, resulting in a decline after the 1860s.     

Judges,Litigants, and the Design of Courts

Two important perspectives on courts highlight fundamentally different elements of adjudication and yield distinct predictions about judicial outcomes. The Attitudinal Model of judicial voting posits judge ideology as a strong predictor of court outcomes. Alternatively, the Law and Economics perspective focuses on the settlement behavior of litigants and reasons that while judges may vote ideologically, litigants adapt to these ideological proclivities, nullifying the effect of judge ideology. This analysis focuses on reconciling expectations about the effects of judge ideology and litigant strategies by examining their contingent nature and the conditioning effects of institutional design. The analysis examines state supreme courts from 1995–1998 to identify empirical evidence supporting both perspectives. While some state supreme courts have discretionary dockets allowing judges greater opportunities to exercise their ideology, others lack discretionary docket control, making dockets and outcomes largely litigant driven. Support for each perspective largely hinges on this fundamental feature of institutional design.     

The Idiom of Legalism in Bar Politics: Lawyers, McCarthyism, and the Civil Rights Era

This paper considers the political role of the organized bar from three perspectives: the historical question of the stance taken by bar associations during the major civil rights debates of the post-World War II period; the sociological question of the extent to which legal associations can act collectively on highly contentious political issues; and the legal question concerning the implications of legal formalism for the politics of the bar. Contrary to the belief that legalism is an inherently conservative means of justifying professional inaction on fundamental issues, the paper argues that in fact legalism may well be the most important basis of intra-professional consensus on those issues as well as the most powerful means by which the profession can influence state and national governments. Legalism can be understood as a common professional idiom which allows mobilization on divisive issues. It can be used in support of both liberal and conservative causes. In this sense, within certain limits, legalism is neutral–an expedient which enables the profession to act politically in circumstances which otherwise would effectively immobilize its collegial associations.     

Ideology and Representation in the US Senate: Roll Calls v. Constituent Assessments

Most research on representation in the US Congress examines the relationship between the voting behaviour of legislators and citizens' preferences. Using a roll call-based measure (DW-NOMINATE scores) of US Senators' ideologies and citizen assessments of Senators' ideologies (from the American National Election Study: Pooled Senate Election Study 1988, 1990, 1992), we demonstrate that judgements about Senators' responsiveness (the extent to which more liberal/conservative Senators represent more liberal/conservative states) is sensitive to measurement issues. In addition, using citizen assessments, we move beyond responsiveness to examine ‘representativeness’ (the extent to which Senators' ideologies match the average ideologies of their constituents) as a dimension of representation. We conclude that citizen assessments should not be overlooked since representation may ultimately be a phenomenon that rests in the eye of the beholder and since governmental legitimacy itself rests on citizens' attitudes and beliefs.     

论法官的选择——谈学习社会主义法治理念的体会

社会主义法治理念,是我国法官在处理个案时应遵循的指导性原理,这具体表现在辩证处理调解与判决、客观真实与法律真实、严格规则主义与司法能动主义、裁判文书的审美价值与说理价值等各种复杂关系的过程中。这需要强化和提升法官的司法素养、司法能力和司法伦理水平。     

Splitting the Difference: Modeling Appellate Court Decisions with Mixed Outcomes

In rendering a decision in a particular case, judges are not limited to finding simply for the appellant or for the respondent. Rather, in many cases, they have the option to find for the former on one or more issues and for the latter on one or more other issues. By thus “splitting the difference,” judges can render a judgment that favors both litigants to some degree. What accounts for such mixed outcomes? Several theoretical perspectives provide potential explanations for this phenomenon. First, Galanter (1974) suggests that litigants with greater resources will achieve more favorable outcomes in the courts. Where two high‐resource, repeat‐player litigants meet in the appeals courts, these more sophisticated and successful parties may be able to persuade the court to render decisions with mixed outcomes that at least partially favor each party. Second, split outcomes may result from strategic interactions among the appeals court judges on the decisionmaking panel. Where majority opinion writers seek to accommodate other judges on the panel, split outcomes have the potential to serve as an inducement for more ideologically extreme judges to join the majority opinion. Finally, Shapiro and Stone Sweet ( Stone Sweet 2000; Shapiro & Stone Sweet 2002 ) propose that courts will sometimes split the difference in order to enhance their legitimacy (and ultimately enhance compliance by losing parties). For example, in highly salient cases, where noncompliance would more clearly threaten court legitimacy, judges may be more likely to split the difference in order to mollify even the losing party. We develop an empirical model of mixed outcomes to test these propositions using data available from the U. S. Courts of Appeals Database and find evidence supportive of all three theoretical perspectives.     

Being a woman judge in Turkish judicial culture

ABSTRACT

This study is a feminist exploration of how gender influences the professional and social lives of women judges in Turkey. I asked women judges from lower courts to talk about their professional journey to explore if and how gender emerges as a category that makes sense to them. Gender was sometimes more visible in the form of a “success” story of playing along men’s rules, or in memories of struggling to balance work and family; while other times it was more implicit in narratives on meeting expectations, failing expectations, ignoring expectations. All in all, these narratives attest to the gendered hierarchies and instances of institutional sexism in what is considered a masculine profession. They also reveal the prevalence of a particularly conservative and patriarchal culture upon the ways in which these inequalities and disadvantages are experienced by women judges in Turkey.     

The Role of Perceived Justice,Political Ideology,and Individual or Collective Framing in Support for Environmental Policies

Effectively addressing environmental challenges such as climate change will require adopting policy measures that have some impact on collective human behavior. The present research examined attitudes toward different environmental policies, specifically focusing on the role of perceived justice. Justice was measured in two ways: as an assessment of the fairness of a particular policy and as a general tendency to endorse statements related to environmental justice. Because justice judgments can be context specific, policies were presented in four conditions, in a 2 × 2 design manipulating the type of impact described, ecological or societal, and the level of focus, individual or collective. The roles of political ideology and environmentalism were also investigated. Results from an online sample of 162 US residents showed that non-coercive policies, overall, were rated as more acceptable. Environmental justice statements were strongly endorsed, and justice in both its specific and general forms was a determinant of policy acceptance. In particular, ratings of the fairness of specific policies were a stronger determinant of acceptability than perceived effectiveness of the policy. Type of impact had little effect, but policies tended to be rated as more acceptable when they were framed in terms of the collective rather than the individual. Although a liberal ideology was associated with acceptance of environmental policies in general and with endorsement of environmental justice, controlling for endorsement of environmental justice eliminated the effect of political ideology in most, but not all, cases. Implications for policy support are discussed.