A Strategic Model of Judicial Behavior in the Lower Federal Courts

Abstract

Although judges may be primarily motivated by their policy preferences, their pursuit of those preferences is often constrained by institutional roles and norms both internal and external to the federal judicial system that require judges to act strategically to translate those preferences into decision outcomes. This research combined endogenous constraints to the court in the interactions amongst justices with exogenous constraints to the court present in the relationships between the judicial, executive and legislative branches into strategic models for U.S. district court and court of appeals judges. Results suggest that the strategic model does explain judicial behavior that may not otherwise be understood as driven solely by attitudinal concerns. In both district court and court of appeals judges’ opinions, the strategic model correctly predicted more decisions than the attitudinal model. A judges’ ideological conflict with the preferences of their colleagues on appellate panels, the Supreme Court, Congress and the President were found to have a significant relationship with judges’ decisions to varying degrees. This research provides empirical support for the strategic model of judicial behavior and contributes to building this relatively new theory for use in understanding the behavior of lower federal court judges.