Left, Right, and Center: Strategic Information Acquisition and Diversity in Judicial Panels

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 phen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of law, economics, & organization economics, & organization, 2013-06, Vol.29 (3), p.638-680
Main Authors: Spitzer, Matthew, Talley, Eric
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Appellate courts
Conservatism
Hierarchy
Ideology
Information acquisition
Information economics
Information retrieval
Information science
Judicial panels
Judicial review
Judicial reviews
Liberalism
Modeling
Signals
Statistical median
Strategic behaviour
Studies
Tillers
Voter behavior
Voting
Voting behaviour
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Summary: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.
ISSN:8756-6222
1465-7341
DOI:10.1093/jleo/ewr013