experience has socialization effects that influence how the judge views presidential power. Members of an organization begin to internalize its goals and norms, and join social networks that reinforce those norms (Chao et al 1994). This explains why, for instance, some scholars have found that Supreme Court justices tend to drift leftward over time (Baum 2006). In addition to career experience, scholars also found that other sociological factors influence decision-making. For example, scholars have found that women decide cases differently in sex discrimination cases (Boyd, Epstein and Martin 2010). Hoiever, as Cross (2007) motes, while scholars have found that gender or race matter in specific instances in influencing decision making, as a whole they have not played a large role in influencing decision making. Moreover, judges with backgrounds rule differently than other judges on tax and “elite” NLRB adjudications (Brudney et al 1999; Schneider 2002, 2005). Clarity of Opinion Writing More recent developments in text analysis have made it easy to quantitatively analyze opinion content to analyze. Scholars studying the Supreme have found that the Supreme Court is more likely to induce compliance by lower courts and agencies by writing clearer opinions, as measured by Readability measures, such as the Fleish score or LINC tests, tests which analyze data to assess how well written a given corpus is (Owens et al. 2016). The theory is that when an opinion is more clearly written, it makes it easier for the lower court to understand and apply the precedent. In a recent book, Owens et al (2016) conclude that the Supreme Court strategically writes more clear opinions when it faces ideologically distant lower courts, when it decides cases involving poorly performing federal agencies, when it decides cases facing less professional legislatures and governors and when it rules contrary to public opinion.
experience has socialization effects that influence how the judge views presidential power. Members of an organization begin to internalize its goals and norms, and join social networks that reinforce those norms (Chao et al 1994). This explains why, for instance, some scholars have found that Supreme Court justices tend to drift leftward over time (Baum 2006). In addition to career experience, scholars also found that other sociological factors influence decision-making. For example, scholars have found that women decide cases differently in sex discrimination cases (Boyd, Epstein and Martin 2010). Hoiever, as Cross (2007) motes, while scholars have found that gender or race matter in specific instances in influencing decision making, as a whole they have not played a large role in influencing decision making. Moreover, judges with “elite” backgrounds rule differently than other judges on tax and NLRB adjudications (Brudney et al 1999; Schneider 2002, 2005). Clarity of Opinion Writing More recent developments in text analysis have made it easy to quantitatively analyze opinion content to analyze. Scholars studying the Supreme have found that the Supreme Court is more likely to induce compliance by lower courts and agencies by writing clearer opinions, as measured by Readability measures, such as the Fleish score or LINC tests, tests which analyze data to assess how well written a given corpus is (Owens et al. 2016). The theory is that when an opinion is more clearly written, it makes it easier for the lower court to understand and apply the precedent. In a recent book, Owens et al (2016) conclude that the Supreme Court strategically writes more clear opinions when it faces ideologically distant lower courts, when it decides cases involving poorly performing federal agencies, when it decides cases facing less professional legislatures and governors and when it rules contrary to public opinion.
semet_paper_01.docx