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 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...

While longstanding theories of political behavior argue that voters do not possess sufficient political knowledge to hold their elected representatives accountable, recent revisionist studies challenge this view, arguing that voters can both follow how their representatives vote and use that...

The last century witnessed a staggering rise in the number of interest groups active in American politics. While this fact is well known, we lack a comprehensive study of the number of groups, the identity of groups, the timing of their births, their mobilization decisions, and their tactical...