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.     

The New Chum girl: Upending Colonial Clichés in Lilian Turner's Emigration Novel

This essay analyses Lilian Turner's Three New Chum Girls (1910) to show how settler authors played with colonial clichés as part of a critical reaction to shifting imperialist and nationalist ideologies at the turn of the century. In particular, Turner redefines the derogatory colonial term “new chum”—commonly used to describe a recent emigrant in the settler colonies—to suggest what the welcome of new arrivals ought to be like. Yet if her deliberate reworking of stereotypes consequently contains an element of wish-fulfilment, the narrative also offers a startlingly stark portrayal of settler life. Emigration, Turner contends in the novel, is neither easy nor a solution to problems at home. Nor does settler Australia provide a convenient space for fortune-seeking sojourns. Turner thus dismantles two clusters of common clichés: emigration as a pat ending in fiction and settlers' return to the homeland as an equally expedient plot twist. The self-irony that runs through much of her intertextual rewriting of both metropolitan fiction and male-coded settler writing reveals how emigration and return were being imagined and written about differently in the settler colonies and how Turner was utilising the exposure of false expectations to promote her vision of a welcoming settler community.     

The Decipherment of Latent White Board Entries

This case involves an incriminating message written on a white board and erased before the investigators seized the evidence. Investigators inquired about the possibility of recovering the entries and subsequently submitted the board to the Documents and Digital Evidence Branch for examination. In an attempt to recover latent handwritten entries, examinations were conducted utilizing the Foster and Freeman Video Spectral Comparator 6000/Hyper Spectral (VSC 6000/HS). Latent handwritten entries were observed with the use of an excitation band‐pass filter in the range of 485 nm‐610 nm with a longpass barrier filter at 645 nm in front of the camera lens of the VSC 6000/HS. Entries were also recovered and imaged using an alternate light source with the Phase One (P65) imaging system. Multiple latent handwritten entries were recovered utilizing various instruments and lighting techniques. This report discusses the details concerning the examination and the results.     

Comparing Homicide‐Suicides in the United States and Sweden

Research on homicides followed by suicides has largely relied on very localized samples and relatively short time spans of data. As a result, little is known about the extent to which patterns within cases of homicide‐suicides are geographically specific. The current study seeks to help fill this gap by comparing twenty years of homicide‐suicide data for Sweden and a large U.S. county. Although some of the underlying patterns in the two countries are similar (e.g., decreasing rates), a number of important differences emerge, particularly with respect to incidence, weapons used, perpetrator age, and relationship of the perpetrator to the victim.     

The Experience of the Infant Entering Refuge (Shelter) Setting with Their Mothers After Fleeing Family Violence

Journal of Family Violence - Almost nothing is known about how the infant may experience being in a women’s Refuge (Shelter) setting with their mother after fleeing family violence, despite...     

The Organizational Ombudsman as Change Agent

Though the organizational ombudsman's role may sometimes be regardedas only a facilitator of individual problem solving, in fact the ombudspersonis ideally situated within the organization to make recommendationsfor systemic change, based on patterns of complaint brought to the office.Indeed, the ombuds is obligated to take steps to prevent future recurrence ofa problem, as well as to resolve the problem at hand. Furthermore, becauseof the ombuds' broad understanding of the organizational culture, theneeds of its leaders and other stakeholders, the ombuds office - in additionto being a vital component of the organization's conflict managementsystem - may also participate in designing, evaluating and improving theentire dispute resolution system for the organization.     

Partisan Bias in Message Selection: Media Gatekeeping of Party Press Releases

Parties try to shape media coverage in ways that are favorable to them, but what determines whether media outlets pick up and report on party messages? Based on content analyses of 1,496 party press releases and 6,512 media reports from the 2013 Austrian parliamentary election campaign, we show that media coverage of individual party messages is influenced not just by news factors, but also by partisan bias. The media are therefore more likely to report on messages from parties their readers favor. Importantly, this effect is greater rather than weaker when these messages have high news value. These findings have important implications for understanding the media’s role in elections and representative democracies in general.