Hostname: page-component-68945f75b7-72kh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-05T12:43:18.610Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Judges' Role Orientations, Attitudes, and Decisions: An Interactive Model*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

James L. Gibson
James L. Gibson*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Despite almost two decades of behavioral research, our models relating the key variables in judicial decision making are incomplete and inadequate. In particular, the impact of two widely used variables, judges' attitudes and role orientations, is poorly understood. While there appears to be a consensus that attitudes and role orientations are important predictors of behavior, no research has been successful in developing a comprehensive model capable of predicting judges' behaviors. This article's objective is the development of a single model incorporating attitudes, role orientations, and decision-making behavior. While attitudes and role orientations taken singly explain insignificant amounts of the variation in behavior, an interactive model of attitudes and role orientations is shown to be extremely useful for understanding behavior. Although this research focuses on the sentencing decisions of Iowa trial court judges, the proposed model is potentially applicable to all instances of decision making.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , September 1978 , pp. 911 - 924
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The author wishes to acknowledge the extremely helpful comments on earlier versions of this article by Professors Beverly B. Cook, David Gow, Justin Green, and Thomas G. Walker.

References

Atkinson, David N. and Neuman, Dale A. (1970). “Judicial Attitude and Defendant Attributes: Some Consequences foi Municipal Court Decision-Making.” Journal of Public Law 19:69–87.Google Scholar
Becker, Theodore L. (1966). “A Survey Study of Hawaiian Judges: The Effect on Decisions of Judicial Role Variations.” American Political Science Review 60:677–80.Google Scholar
Bowen, Don R. (1965). “The Explanation of Judicial Voting Behavior from Sociological Characteristics of Judges.” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University.Google Scholar
Campbell, Donald T. (1963). “Social Attitudes and Other Acquired Behavioral Dispositions.” In Koch, Sigmund (ed.), Psychology: A Study of a Science. Study II. Empirical Substructure and Relations with Other Sciences. Vol. 6. Investigations of Man as Socius: Their Place in Psychology and the Social Sciences. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 94–172.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jacob and Cohen, Patricia (1975). Applied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Cook, Beverly B. (1973). “Sentencing Behavior of Federal Judges, Draft Cases–1972.” University of Cincinnati Law Review 42:597–633.Google Scholar
Deutscher, twin (1973). What We Say/What We Do: Sentiments and Acts. Glenview, Ill: Scott, Foresman.Google Scholar
Flango, Victor E. and Schubert, Glendon (1969). “Two Surveys of Simulated Judicial Decision-Making: Hawaii and The Philippines.” In Schubert, Glendon and Danelski, David J. (eds.), Comparative Judicial Behavior: Cross-Cultural Studies of Political Decision-Making in the East and West. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 197–220.Google Scholar
Flango, Victor E., Wenner, Lettie McSpadden, and Wenner, Manfred W. (1975). “The Concept of Judicial Role: A Methodological Note.” American Journal of Political Science 19:277–90.Google Scholar
Gibson, James L. (1976). “Judges as Representatives: Constituency Influence on Trial Courts.” Paper presented at the 1976 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois.Google Scholar
Gibson, James L. (1977a). “Discriminant Functions, Role Orientations and Judicial Behavior: Theoretical and Methodological Linkages.” Journal of Politics 39:984–1007.Google Scholar
Gibson, James L.(1977b). “Bargained Justice: The Interaction of Judges and Prosecutors in Sentencing.” Unpublished manuscript, Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.Google Scholar
Glick, Henry R. (1971). Supreme Courts in State Politics: An Investigation of the Judicial Role. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Glick, Henry R. and Vines, Kenneth N. (1969). “Law-Making in the State Judiciary: A Comparative Study of the Judicial Role in Four States.” Polity 2:142–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Edward (1961). Judicial Attitudes in Sentencing. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Grossman, Joel B. (1962). “Role Playing and the Analysis of Judicial Behavior: The Case of Mr. Justice Frankfurter.” Journal of Public Law 11:285–309.Google Scholar
Hagen, John (1974). “Extra-Legal Attributes and Criminal Sentencing: An Assessment of a Socio-logical Viewpoint.” Law and Society Review 8:357–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hogarth, John (1971). Sentencing as a Human Process. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Howard, J. Woodford (1974a). “Role Perceptions on the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 2D, 5th, and D.C. Circuits.” Research Report #2. Washington, D.C.: Federal Judicial Center.Google Scholar
Howard, J. Woodford (1974b). “Role Perceptions and Behavior in Three U.S. Courts of Appeals.” Paper presented at the 1974 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois.Google Scholar
Johnston, J. (1972). Econometric Methods, 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Nagel, Stuart S. (1963). “Off-the-Bench Judicial Attitudes.” In Schubert, Glendon (ed.), Judicial Decision-Making. New York: Free Press, pp. 29–54.Google Scholar
Nagel, Stuart S. (1961). “Political Party Affiliation and Judges' Decisions.” American Political Science Review 55:843–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Packer, Herbert L. (1968). The Limits of the Criminal Sanction. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Pritchett, C. Herman (1941). “Divisions of Opinion Among Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1939–1941.” American Political Science Review 25:890–98.Google Scholar
Rohde, David (1972). “Policy Goals and Opinion Coalitions in the Supreme Court.” Midwest Journal of Political Science 16:208–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rokeach, Milton (1968). Beliefs, Attitudes and Values: A Theory of Organization and Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Schubert, Glendon (1963). “Judicial Attitudes and Voting Behavior: The 1961 Term of the United States Supreme Court.” Law and Contemporary Problems 2:100–42.Google Scholar
Schubert, Glendon (1975). The Judicial Mind Revisited: Psychometric Analysis of Supreme Court Ideology. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Spaeth, Harold J. (1963). “Warren Court Attitudes toward Business: The ‘B’ Scale.” In Schubert, Glendon (ed.), Judicial Decision-Making. New York: Free Press, pp. 79–110.Google Scholar
Tanenhaus, Joseph (1966). “The Cumulative Scaling of Judicial Decisions.” Harvard Law Review 79:1583–94.Google Scholar
Thomas, Kerry, ed. (1971). Attitudes and Behaviour: Selected Readings. Baltimore: Penguin.Google Scholar
Tiffany, Lawrence P., Avichai, Yakov, and Peters, Geoffrey W. (1975). “A Statistical Analysis of Sentencing in Federal Courts: Defendants Convicted After Trial, 1967–1968.” The Journal of Legal Studies 4:369–90.Google Scholar
Ulmer, S. Sidney (1960). “Supreme Court Behavior and Civil Rights.” Western Political Quarterly 13:288–311.Google Scholar
Ulmer, S. Sidney (1974). “Dimensionality and Change in Judicial Behavior.” In Herndon, James F. and Bernd, Joseph L. (ed.), Mathematical Applications in Political Science–VII. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, pp. 40–67.Google Scholar
Ungs, Thomas D. and Baas, Larry R. (1972). “Judicial Role Perceptions: A Q Technique Study of Ohio Judges.” Law and Society Review 6:343–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vines, Kenneth N. (1969). “The Judicial Role in the American States: An Exploration.” In Grossman, Joel and Tanenhaus, Joseph (ed.), Frontiers of Judicial Research. New York: Wiley, pp. 461–85.Google Scholar
Walker, Thomas G. (1973). “Behavioral Tendencies in the Three-Judge District Court.” American Journal of Political Science 17:407–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.