Courts

Inferring Individual Preferences from Group Decisions: Judicial Preference Variation and Aggregation in Asylum Appeals

18 November 2025

While many democracies nominate partisan judges, empirical research has struggled to assess whether such judges adhere to Aristotle’s maxim that like cases should be treated alike. One fundamental problem hindering empirical research is that many courts only report decisions of panels, not the opinions of individual …

Republican-Majority Appellate Panels Increase Execution Rates for Capital Defendants

21 April 2021

We use the quasi-random assignment of cases to three-judge panels on the US Courts of Appeals to assess the consistency of adjudication of death penalty appeals. We find clear evidence that panels apply different standards depending on whether a majority of the panel was appointed by Democratic or Republican …