Ideological influences on governance and regulation: The comparative case of supreme courts |
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Authors: | Keren Weinshall Udi Sommer Ya'acov Ritov |
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Institution: | 1. Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel;2. Department of Political Science, Columbia University and Department of Political Science, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel;3. Department of Statistics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel and Department of Statistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA |
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Abstract: | A key influence on governance and regulation is the ideology of individual decisionmakers. However, certain branches of government – such as courts – while wielding wide ranging regulatory powers, are expected to do so with no attitudinal influence. We posit a dynamic response model to investigate attitudinal behavior in different national courts. Our ideological scores are estimated based on probability models that formalize the assumption that judicial decisions consist of ideological, strategic, and jurisprudential components. The Dynamic Comparative Attitudinal Measure estimates the attitudinal decisionmaking on the institution as a whole. Additionally, we estimate Ideological Ideal Point Preference for individual justices. Empirical results with original data for political and religious rights rulings in the Supreme Courts of the United States, Canada, India, the Philippines, and Israel corroborate the measures' validity. Future studies can utilize Ideological Ideal Point Preference and the Dynamic Comparative Attitudinal Measure to cover additional courts, legal spheres, and time frames, and to estimate government deference. |
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Keywords: | attitudinal decisionmaking comparative law judicial politics supreme court judicial ideology |
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