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Judgment-Rationale Inconsistency In The U.S. Supreme Court

Hitt, Matthew P.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1406124744

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Political Science.
States exercise authority over citizens' lives and property through the judicial system. In principle, judicial bodies ought to justify this responsibility by providing consistent rationales for their judgments. Consistency means that the outcome of a dispute is supported by reasoning which itself is supported by a majority of judges on a collegial court. Yet without strong assumptions, collective decision making in collegial courts and other bodies is susceptible to inconsistency. Resolving fundamental questions of life, liberty, and property in an inconsistent manner lacks legitimacy due to the lack of reasons given for the exercise of authority. Further, the fractured reasoning of these decisions means that lower courts bound by precedent to follow an inconsistent decision may struggle to determine which rationale or legal rule to apply and thus decide cases inconsistently themselves, cascading the weakening of legitimacy through the legal system. Despite the gravity of these potential consequences, the severity of the problem of judgment-rationale inconsistency is unknown. To remedy this lack of knowledge, I undertake a systematic study of inconsistency, focusing on the United States Supreme Court. I analyze the properties of inconsistent decisions, explore the impact of inconsistency on the lower federal courts, and investigate the frequency of inconsistency over time. My analysis advances knowledge about the Supreme Court and social choice theory in several ways. First, the investigation of the case-level correlates of inconsistency shows that the strongest form of inconsistency, the discursive dilemma, arises with unsettling frequency in politically salient cases and in exercises of judicial review over Congress. Second, an analysis of Supreme Court precedent showed that discursive dilemmas are followed significantly less than other precedents at the district court level. This finding indicates that inconsistent precedents are of little use to the legal system at large. Finally, the third analysis shows that the frequency of inconsistency at the Supreme Court fell considerably after 1988, when the Court gained virtually total discretion to set its agenda. This finding makes a theoretical contribution by demonstrating that known stability-enhancing institutions for legislative committees, like agenda control, can also improve the consistency of a collegial court's output. Scholars assume inconsistency emerges very rarely. Yet I find that inconsistency makes up between 1 and 13 % of the Court's output in any given term 1946-2010. Further, it appears the Court does not resolve conflicts between lower courts when such resolution would generate an inconsistency. I argue that inconsistency represents an unavoidable pathology for any hierarchical judicial system. Therefore, societies must choose where in their judicial hierarchies inconsistency is least damaging. My research demonstrates that this normative institutional choice is necessitated and motivated by empirical reality.
Gregory Caldeira (Advisor)
Janet Box-Steffensmeier (Committee Member)
Lawrence Baum (Committee Member)
William Minozzi (Committee Member)
Michael Neblo (Committee Member)
144 p.
Political Science
Supreme Court; Judicial Politics; Social Choice Theory; Discursive Dilemma; Doctrinal Paradox

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Hitt, M. P. (2014). Judgment-Rationale Inconsistency In The U.S. Supreme Court [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1406124744

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Hitt, Matthew. Judgment-Rationale Inconsistency In The U.S. Supreme Court. 2014. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1406124744.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Hitt, Matthew. "Judgment-Rationale Inconsistency In The U.S. Supreme Court." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1406124744

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.
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