Collaborative Research: Minority Protection with Partisan Judges: The Impact of Judicial Review on Distributive Legislation

这个合作项目研究司法审查对立法机构分配选择的影响。更具体地说，它审查了一个完全由狭隘党派法官组成的司法机构在立法过程中保护少数人利益的能力。该项目有望表明，与传统观点相反，即使法官有狭隘的党派倾向，司法审查仍然可以很好地保护少数群体的利益。首席调查人员的研究策略首先是假设司法审查的“最坏情况”背景。首先，调查人员假设法官只会寻求促进他们所属的各自集团或“派系”的狭隘利益。其次，立法者和法官的行为被认为是在最有可能导致赤裸裸的党派结果的背景下进行的——这是一种纯粹的分配背景，即分配给一个派系的资源必然会从其他派系手中夺走。为了研究司法审查对分配结果的影响，主要研究人员开发了一个司法-立法互动的无限视界博弈，在这个博弈中，立法机关在司法审查的前提下，在立法派系之间分配一定数额的收入。调查人员扩大了现有的立法谈判模式，增加了一个司法审查阶段，在这个阶段，一名属于其中一个派系的法官，只寻求其利益，审查立法机关制定的拨款。在现有模型提供的基线下，不同模型之间立法结果的差异可以直接归因于司法审查对立法行为的影响。调查人员期望，该模型将显示，即使在这些“最坏”的情况下，司法审查仍然在两个重要方面“起作用”。首先，他们希望证明，在一个有司法审查的制度下，分配立法比没有司法审查的制度下分配得更公平，即使法官是狭隘的党派。第二，他们期望在其余的案件中表明- -当立法分配排除某些少数群体获得份额时- -司法审查减少了实际执行的不公平立法的数量。拟议项目的预期意义有三个方面。首先，该项目的结果将对目前国际上对宪法设计的兴趣产生影响，特别是关于将司法审查纳入宪法制度。其次，该项目将对评估美国各州的司法遴选程序产生影响。最后，该模型有望产生能够在后续工作中进行实证检验的假设。

This collaborative project examines the impact of judicial review on distributive choices by legislatures. More specifically, it examines the ability of a judiciary composed solely of narrowly partisan judges to protect minority interests in the legislative process. The project is expected to show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, judicial review can still work well to protect minority interests even when judges are narrowly partisan. The principal investigators' research strategy begins by assuming a "worst-case" context for judicial review. First, the investigators assume that judges seek singularly to advance the narrow interests of the respective group, or "faction," to which they belong. Secondly, the behavior of legislators and judges is considered in the context most likely to invite nakedly partisan outcomes - the purely distributive context of a constant-sum game in which resources allocated to one faction are necessarily taken away from the other factions. To study the impact of judicial review on distributive outcomes, the principal investigators develop an infinite-horizon game of judicial-legislative interaction in which a legislature distributes a given sum of revenue across legislative factions, subject to judicial review. The investigators extend the extant model of legislative bargaining by adding a judicial review stage in which a judge, who belongs to one of the factions and seeks only its interests, reviews allocations enacted by the legislature. With the baseline provided by the extant model, differences in legislative outcomes between the models can be attributed directly to the impact of judicial review on legislative behavior. The investigators expect that the model will show, even under these "worst-case" conditions, that judicial review still "works" in two important ways. First, they expect to show that distributive legislation is more equitably distributed in a system with judicial review than without it, even when judges are narrowly partisan. Secondly, they expect to show in the remaining cases - when the legislative allocation excludes some minority groups from receiving a share - that judicial review reduces the amount of the inequitable legislation that is actually implemented. The expected significance of the proposed project is threefold. First, the results of the project will have implications for the on-going international interest in constitutional design, specifically regarding the inclusion of judicial review in constitutional systems. Secondly, the project will have implications for evaluating judicial selection procedures in American states. Finally, the model is expected to generate hypotheses capable of being empirically tested in subsequent work.