The Impact of Changes in Judicial Doctrine: The Abrogation of Charitable Immunity

Abstract

Common law doctrines may have as significant an impact on everyday life as those of the U.S. Supreme Court. This paper focuses on the abrogation of the doctrine of charitable immunity, which has occurred in 32 states since World War II. We investigate the impact of this change on average hospital room rate charges in each state. Both static and dynamic analyses are conducted. In both we control for economic and inflationary variables by using state per capita income data. Static analysis involves year-by-year comparison of room rate charges in abrogating states with those in states which retain the doctrine. The results are inconclusive. In dynamic analysis we identify those states which abrogated the doctrine and note changes in their average room rates at periods two, four, and six years subsequent to the abrogations. We also identify states which underwent no change in doctrine over the same periods. The amounts of room rate change in the two categories of states are then compared. We had expected the amount to be greater in abrogating states, and in fact this is almost universally the case. This strongly suggests that abrogation of charitable immunity has produced a demonstrable increase in hospital room rate charges. The impact of court decisions upon society has been the object of research by political scientists for well over a decade. However, the focus has by and large been limited to (1) decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, and (2) the so-called law area. In other words, attention has gone to those salient and dramatic decisions involving such issues as racial desegregation, school prayers, and the rights of criminal defendants. By contrast, political science has virtually ignored the impact of other tribunals. This is particularly true for the common law decisions of state courts.' Common law decisions, however, are very much a part of politics. They often authoritatively determine norms of behavior and allocation of financial assets and risks. Indeed, as the discipline of political science has now moved into an era of focus on the study of public policy, it is unfortunate that so