We present a formal game theoretic model of adjudication by a collegial court. The model incorporates dispute resolution as well as judicial policy making and indicates the relationship between the two. It explicitly addresses joins, concurrences and dissents, and assumes "judicial" rather than...

The practice of horizontal stare decisis requires that judges occasionally decide cases "incorrectly''. What sustains this practice? Given a heterogeneous bench, we show that the increasing differences in dispositions property of preferences generates gains when judges trade dispositions over...

We discuss a central question in the study of courts: What do judges want? We suggest three different domains that might serve as the basic preferences of a judge: case dispositions and rules, caseloads and case mixes, and social consequences. We emphasize preferences over dispositions on the...

We review the basic building blocks of the case-space approach to modeling courts, particularly cases, dispositions, and rules. We provide numerous examples of case spaces. We clarify the policy-making actions of courts, distinguishing statutory interpretation, review of agency rule-making on...

We explore the properties of voting rules and procedures employed by appellate courts in the US. Our model features: (1) a two-stage decision-making process (first over case disposition, then over majority opinion content), (2) dispositional consistency (the new rule must yield the Court's...

This essay reviews Epstein, Landes, and Posner's The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice. Their book systematically asks how the role of ideology varies across the tiers of the federal judicial hierarchy. A major finding is that the impact of ideology...

We present a formal game theoretic model of adjudication by a collegial court. The model incorporates dispute resolution as well as judicial policy making and indicates the relationship between the two. It explicitly addresses joins, concurrences and dissents, and assumes 'judicial' rather than...

Special interests attempt to influence lawmakers through campaign contributions and through informational lobbying. Both avenues have been explored extensively in theoretical models. Only the former, however, has received much empirical scrutiny. We provide the first empirical tests of the major...

The emergence of a vast administrative state is a hallmark "arguably the hallmark" of modern government. As was quickly understood by Woodrow Wilson and other early students of American political development, the presence of gigantic standing bureaucracies with enormous scope and power presents...

We formally model the impact of presidential policymaking on the willingness of bureaucrats to exert effort and stay in the government. In the model, centralized policy initiative by the president demotivates policy-oriented bureaucrats and can impel them to quit rather than implicate themselves...