Designated Diffidence: District Court Judges on the Courts of Appeals

James Jules Brudney · Corey Ditslear

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Judicial and Constitutional Studies Legal processes and jurisprudence Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems

Abstract

Since 1980, District Court Judges, designated pursuant to federal statute, have helped decide over 75,000 court of appeals cases—nearly one of every five merits decisions. Although scholars and judges have warned that the presence of these visitors on appellate panels may undermine consistency, legitimacy, or collegiality, little empirical evidence exists related to such concerns. Working with an especially complete data set of labor law opinions, the authors found that district court visitors perform in a much more diffident fashion than their appellate colleagues. They contribute notably fewer majority opinions and dissents. In addition, their participations do not reflect their professional or personal backgrounds to nearly the same degree as their appellate colleagues do when voting on labor law matters. The authors' findings and analyses regarding the behavior of designated district judges should be of interest to appellate courts considering the challenges of caseload management and to scholars studying processes and outcomes in the courts of appeal.

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References

1989Unifying Political Methodology: The Likelihood Theory of Statistical Inference 1922The Nature of the Judicial Process 1998Judicial Partisanship and Obedience to Legal Doctrine: Whistleblowing on the Federal Courts of Appeals 1997The Puzzle of Judicial Behavior 1981Personal Attribute Models of the Voting Behavior of U.S. Supreme Court Justices: Liberalism in Civil Liberties and Economics Decisions, 1946–1978 1998Unifying Political Methodology 1995Politics and the Judiciary: The Influence of Judicial Background on Case Outcomes 1998The puzzle of judicial behavior

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20105 Judges as Members of Small Groups 20107 Is There a Psychology of Judging?2011Does Prosecutorial Experience “Balance Out” a Judge's Liberal Tendencies?2008The Federalist Society's Influence on the Federal Judiciary 20101 Motivation and Judicial Behavior: Expanding the Scope of Inquiry 2011The Small Group Context: Designated District Court Judges in the U.S. Courts of Appeals

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