Law Enforcement
David Skarbek
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
How can people who lack access to effective government institutions establish property rights and facilitate exchange? The illegal narcotics trade in Los Angeles has flourished despite its inability to rely on state-based formal institutions of governance. An alternative system of governance has emerged from an unexpected source - behind bars. The Mexican Mafia prison gang can extort drug dealers on the street because they wield substantial control over inmates in the county jail system and because drug dealers anticipate future incarceration. The gang's ability to extract resources creates incentives for them to provide governance institutions that mitigate market failures among Hispanic drug-dealing street gangs, including enforcing deals, protecting property rights, and adjudicating disputes. Evidence collected from federal indictments and other legal documents related to the Mexican Mafia prison gang and numerous street gangs supports this claim.
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Self-Enforcing Constitutions: With an Application to Democratic Stability In America's First Century
Sonia Mittal & Barry Weingast
Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Most students of constitutions focus on normative questions or study the effects of particular constitutional provisions. This article falls into a third and much smaller tradition that attempts to study what makes some constitutions more likely to survive. This article develops a theory of self-enforcing constitutions and then applies it to the early United States. But for the issue of slavery, constitutional democracy in the United States was self-enforcing by about 1800. Nonetheless, crises over slavery threatened the nation on numerous occasions. The civil war decisively ended slavery as a source of political division, allowing self-enforcing democracy (for white males) to reemerge following the Compromise of 1877.
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Juvenile Penalties for "Lawyering Up": The Role of Counsel and Extralegal Case Characteristics
Gaylene Armstrong & Bitna Kim
Crime & Delinquency, November 2011, Pages 827-848
Abstract:
The presence of counsel for juveniles in the courtroom seems advantageous from a due process perspective, yet some studies suggest that juveniles receive harsher dispositions when represented by an attorney. This study tested whether a "counsel penalty" existed regardless of attorney type and, guided by prior sentencing literature, used a more comprehensive model to determine the influence of extralegal and contextual factors that may amplify the counsel penalty. Utilizing official data from a Northeastern state in a multilevel modeling strategy, this study found that regardless of the type of counsel retained, harsher sentences were received as compared with cases in which a juvenile was not represented by counsel even after controlling for offense type. Moreover, minority youth with public defenders and males with private counsel received harsher sentences while community characteristics did not appear to have a significant influence on sentencing decisions.
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Dion Farganis & Justin Wedeking
Law & Society Review, September 2011, Pages 525-559
Abstract:
Criticism of Supreme Court confirmation hearings has intensified considerably over the past two decades. In particular, there is a growing sense that nominees are now less forthcoming and that the hearings have suffered as a result. In this article, we challenge that conventional wisdom. Based on a comprehensive content analysis of every question and answer in all of the modern confirmation hearings - nearly 11,000 in total - we find only a mild decline in the candor of recent nominees. Moreover, we find that senators ask more probing questions than in the past, and that nominees are now more explicit about their reasons when they choose not to respond - two factors that may be fueling the perception that evasiveness has increased in recent years. We close with a discussion of the normative implications of our findings as well as an outline for future research into this issue.
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Brandon Bartels & Christopher Johnston
Public Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
To what extent should Supreme Court justices be appointed on the basis of ideology and politics as opposed to qualifications and experience only? We examine how Americans' preferences regarding this question are influenced by their perceptions of the Court as politicized in how it goes about its work. From a "backlash" perspective, such perceptions should diminish preferences for a political appointment process, whereas a "political reinforcement" perspective suggests an enhancement effect. National survey data show that a large segment of the public perceives of the Court in political terms and prefers that justices be chosen on political and ideological bases. Empirical evidence refutes the backlash hypothesis and supports the political reinforcement hypothesis; the more individuals perceive the Court in politicized terms, the greater their preferences for a political appointment process. Those who view the Court as highly politicized do not differentiate the Court from the explicitly political branches and therefore prefer that justices be chosen on political and ideological grounds. The results have implications for the public's perceptions and expectations of the Court as a "political" institution.
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Mark Jonathan McKenzie
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Redistricting cases offer a unique opportunity to test the effects of partisan favoritism in judging and to investigate when partisanship might influence decision making distinctly from ideology. How partisan are federal judges? In an analysis of federal district court cases from 1981 to 2007, this study finds that federal judges are neither neutral arbiters nor crass partisans. Instead, judging in redistricting cases can best be described in terms of constrained partisanship. When redistricting law is clear, judges eschew decision making that furthers their party's interests. However, where legal precedent is ambiguous, partisan favoritism exacts a strong influence on judicial behavior.
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Left, Right, and Center: Strategic Information Acquisition and Diversity in Judicial Panels
Matthew Spitzer & Eric Talley
Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article develops and analyzes a hierarchical model of judicial review in multimember appellate courts. In our model, judicial panels acquire information endogenously, through the efforts of individual panelists, acting strategically. The resulting equilibria strongly resemble the empirical phenomena collectively known as "panel effects" - and in particular the observed regularity with which ideological diversity on a panel predicts greater moderation in voting behavior (even after controlling for the median voter's preferences). In our model, nonpivotal panel members with ideologies far from the median have the greatest incentive to acquire additional policy-relevant information where no one on a homogeneous panel would be willing to do so. The resulting information structure pushes deliberation and observed voting patterns toward apparent moderation. We illustrate the plausibility of our model by calibrating it to empirical data and explore various normative implications of our theory.
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The Role of Law Clerks in the U.S. Supreme Court's Agenda-Setting Process
Ryan Black & Christina Boyd
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do law clerks influence the decisions made by justices on the U.S. Supreme Court? Although numerous studies of law clerk influence exist, none has controlled for alternative factors that lead a justice to behave in a particular way even absent the actions of the law clerk. Turning to the Court's agenda-setting stage, we draw from archival materials contained in the private papers of Justice Harry A. Blackmun to address this precise issue. Our results suggest that once a justice's initial voting inclinations in a case are controlled for, the ability of a law clerk to systematically alter a justice's vote is conditioned on the quality of the petition, the direction of the clerk's recommendation, and the ideological closeness of the pool clerk and voting justice. Given the closeness of many agenda-setting votes, we suggest that clerk influence could be the determining factor in whether a case is granted review by the Court.
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State Gun Policy and Cross-State Externalities: Evidence from Crime Gun Tracing
Brian Knight
NBER Working Paper, September 2011
Abstract:
This paper provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of cross-state externalities associated with gun regulations in the context of the gun trafficking market. Using gun tracing data, which identify the source state for crime guns recovered in destination states, we find that firearms in this market tend to flow from states with weak gun laws to states with strict gun laws, satisfying a necessary condition for the existence of cross-state externalities in the theoretical model. We also find an important role for transportation costs in this market, with gun flows more significant between nearby states; this finding suggests that externalities are spatial in nature. Finally, we present evidence that criminal possession of guns is higher in states exposed to weak gun laws in nearby states.
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Jamie Flexon, Lisa Stolzenberg & Stewart D'Alessio
Crime & Delinquency, November 2011, Pages 928-949
Abstract:
On March 1, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the execution of offenders under the age of 18 at the time of their criminal offense was unconstitutional. Although many welcomed this decision, some individuals still remain concerned that the elimination of the specter of capital punishment will inevitably increase homicidal behavior among juveniles by reducing the prospect of deterrence. Using monthly data from the Supplemental Homicide Reports and a multiple time-series research design, the authors investigate the impact of the Roper v. Simmons decision on homicides perpetrated by juveniles in the 20 states affected by the law. Maximum likelihood results reveal that the repeal of the juvenile death penalty has had no effect on juvenile homicidal behavior.
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Sarah Kaczmarek & Abraham Newman
International Organization, October 2011, Pages 745-770
Abstract:
Can the application of domestic law by bureaucracies in powerful states alter policy dynamics globally? Courts and regulatory agencies with jurisdiction over large markets routinely impose national rules to conduct transpiring outside of their physical borders. Such extraterritoriality has expanded to issues ranging from antitrust to the environment. Proponents claim that extraterritorial acts can have far-reaching international consequences, spilling over into the domestic political economy of regulation in target states. Skeptics, however, question the effects of these sanctions against internationally mobile actors. In this study, we offer the first quantitative analysis of extraterritorial intervention for global policy convergence. In particular, we construct an original time-series panel data set to test the association between extraterritorial actions by U.S. prosecutors and the national enforcement of foreign bribery regulations in target countries. Our empirical analysis finds strong statistical evidence linking extraterritoriality to national policy implementation, with jurisdictions that experienced a U.S. intervention being twenty times more likely to enforce their national rules. The findings suggest the important influence that domestic law in powerful states may have for global cooperation in general and sheds light on the key pillars of international anticorruption efforts in particular.
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Why Do Voters Dismantle Checks and Balances?
Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson & Ragnar Torvik
NBER Working Paper, August 2011
Abstract:
Voters often dismantle constitutional checks and balances on the executive. If such checks and balances limit presidential abuses of power and rents, why do voters support their removal? We argue that by reducing politician rents, checks and balances also make it cheaper to bribe or influence politicians through non-electoral means. In weakly-institutionalized polities where such non-electoral influences, particularly by the better organized elite, are a major concern, voters may prefer a political system without checks and balances as a way of insulating politicians from these influences. When they do so, they are effectively accepting a certain amount of politician (presidential) rents in return for redistribution. We show that checks and balances are less likely to emerge when (equilibrium) politician rents are low; when the elite are better organized and are more likely to be able to influence or bribe politicians; and when inequality and potential taxes are high (which makes redistribution more valuable to the majority). We show that the main intuition, that checks and balances, by making politicians "cheaper to bribe," are potentially costly to the majority, is valid under different ways of modeling the form of checks and balances.
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Jury Service as Civic Engagement: Determinants of Jury Summons Compliance
Andrew Bloeser, Carl McCurley & Jeffery Mondak
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Much like other forms of civic engagement, many Americans apparently perceive jury "duty" as optional, a circumstance that often has left courts struggling to seat juries. Considering how individuals orient themselves to this often neglected form of civic responsibility facilitates a more holistic understanding of citizen behavior and its antecedents. In this article, we explore the possible effects of resources, barriers and personality traits on jury summons compliance. Data are drawn from a field experiment and corresponding survey conducted in the State of Washington. Results reveal that cultural/linguistic factors act as strong barriers to jury service and that people's personality traits influence summons compliance. Efforts to reduce resource constraints via heightened juror pay brought no positive effect on compliance rates.
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The Interaction of Legal and Social Norm Enforcement
Sebastian Kube & Christian Traxler
Journal of Public Economic Theory, October 2011, Pages 639-660
Abstract:
Although legal sanctions are often nondeterrent, we frequently observe compliance with "mild laws." A possible explanation is that the incentives to comply are shaped not only by legal, but also by social sanctions. This paper employs a novel experimental approach to study the link between legal and social norm enforcement. We analyze whether the two institutions are complements or substitutes. Our results show that legal sanctions partially crowd out social norm enforcement. Mild laws nevertheless give scope for a potentially large, positive welfare effect, as a higher level of compliance is achieved at lower social enforcement costs.
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Freedom in paradise: Quality of conditional release reports submitted to the Hawaii judiciary
Annie Nguyen et al.
International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, September-October 2011, Pages 341-348
Abstract:
Annually thousands of insanity acquitees are released from mental hospitals when they are no longer determined to be dangerous. This research examined quality of post-acquittal Conditional Release (CR) reports submitted to the Hawaii Judiciary. Hawaii utilizes a "three panel" system for assessing trial felony competency, criminal responsibility, and conditional release, where typically two psychologists (one Department of Health and one community-based) and one community-based psychiatrist submit independent reports to the Court. One hundred fifty CR reports were rated using a 44-item report quality measure. Interrater reliability trials indicated good to excellent agreement between quality ratings. Overall level of report quality was poor regardless of examiners' professional discipline, employer, or board certification status. Concordance rates for CR opinions were poor. Level of agreement between the judicial determination and majority recommendations was also poor. Reasons for the poor quality and level of agreement are discussed with recommendations for report quality improvement, including standardization of procedures and use of forensic risk assessment instruments.