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Judicial Decisionmaking and the Use of Panels in the Canadian Supreme Court and the South African Appellate Division

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Lori Hausegger  and
Stacia Haynie
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Abstract

Research on the U.S. Supreme Court suggests that judges' decisions are influenced by their policy preferences. Moreover, judges behave strategically to facilitate outcomes that conform as close as possible to those preferences. We seek to generalize this assertion to judicial actors in two very diverse social systems: Canada in the post-Charter years and apartheid-era South Africa. Specifically, we analyze the use of panel assignments by the chief justices in both countries. We find that chief justices do behave strategically. Chief justices in both countries do not assign judges to panels randomly but rather are influenced by the tenure and ideology of the sitting judges and the issues presented in the case.

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Type
Articles of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , September 2003 , pp. 635 - 657
Copyright
© 2003 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

This research was funded in part by Louisiana Educational Quality Support Fund (Grant #(19969-98)-RD-A-06). The Canadian model is based on a database created by Lori Hausegger and Gregory Caldeira. The authors are grateful for the advice and assistance of James Garand, Leonard Ray, Paul Wahlbeck, and Christopher Zorn.

References

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