COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Fitting More Pieces into the Puzzle of Judicial Behavior: A Multi-Country Data Base and Program of Research

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The objective of the project is to encourage the expansion of systematic comparative analyses of courts, judges and their behavior based on replicable data. This project will eventuate in a multi-country data base that will (1) focus on the top courts from a manageable most different systems sample of nations, (2) select annual samples of their formal or reported decisions over a half century, (3) code the manifest content of the opinions accompanying the sampled decisions according to a master codebook, measure a set of common variables that are relevant to various analytical interests and that can be equivalently measured across all included nations, and (4) supplement the common variables by coding a set of system-specific variables that might not be measured across all nations.These data will be created and archived for public use. However, the P.I.s also will use them to analyze an important set of initial research questions, including (1) do these and other courts regularly decide cases with apparently important policy consequences, or do most of them spend most of their time resolving legal disputes of only narrow policy significance?, (2) Do "the haves in fact always come out ahead"? (3) Do judicial independence, functional performance, and support of incumbent regimes by national courts vary with political transitions, proclaimed national crises or with executive appointments of sympathetic judges?