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The Structure of Legal Doctrine in a Judicial Hierarchy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Claire B. Wofford
Claire B. Wofford*
Affiliation:
College of Charleston
*
Contact the author at woffordcb@cofc.edu.
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Abstract

Political scientists interested in the structure of legal doctrine are especially attuned to the impact of the judicial hierarchy. They generally frame the issue as whether a higher court will issue a rigid “rule” to prevent shirking or a vague “standard” to give more discretion to lower courts. This “rules versus standards” debate rests on two presumptions: jurists write doctrine, and doctrine varies in flexibility. Using the US Supreme Court, I offer an initial empirical evaluation of these presumptions. The findings reveal that the justices almost always adopt doctrine suggested to them and that these doctrines differ little in flexibility.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , Fall 2019 , pp. 263 - 280
Copyright
© 2019 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

This research was supported with funding from the College of Charleston and the National Science Foundation (SES 1023952). I would like to thank Natalie Prince and Melissa Neri for their excellent research assistance and the reviewers and editor for their helpful suggestions. I would also like to thank Jennifer Bowie, Micheal Giles, Thomas Walker, and Tom Clark for their comments on previous versions of this article.

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