Legislatures and the Judiciary: The Effects of Statutory Constraint

法律和司法：法律约束的影响这项提案直接关注国会法规中包含的语言，旨在评估法定语言在多大程度上被用于控制州和联邦法官所做的决定。由于缺乏跨越法律和政治多个层面的经验性措施，因此很难评估立法和司法部门之间的紧张关系。虽然许多分析已经经验地证明了意识形态的影响，但还没有出现类似的文献来对法律影响进行量化分析。因此，理论发展往往集中在法官和国会议员的意识形态上，而损害了法律影响。尽管定性研究强化了关于法律影响的传统智慧，但“真正的问题不是这种行为是否存在，而是它是否存在于系统的、有实质意义的层面上”(Spaeth and Segal 1999，7)。我们的研究项目开发了一种新的法律维度--法定约束--的经验衡量标准，并在州法院和联邦法院的判决中测试了这一衡量标准。它通过允许学者评估法律、态度和制度维度上的政府机构之间的关系，促进了理论的更广泛发展。此外，我们的研究为检验立法机关和司法机关之间的三权分立关系提供了另一种方法。我们通过研究联邦和州立法机构如何试图使用法规的语言来控制法官的决策过程来发展这一方法。我们认为，每个国家都有能力通过包含详细语言的法规来约束司法行为。为了研究这篇论文，我们借用了官僚政治文献，引入并检验了一种新的法定约束措施。这一措施允许严格审查法律和政治之间的关系(即法律约束和意识形态偏好之间的关系)。我们将在本研究项目中检验的假设建立在我们之前的研究基础上，表明国会通过法定语言成功地控制了司法行为。在这里，我们试图通过研究司法决策中政治和法律之间的权衡来提高我们的理论知识。更广泛的影响这些初步结果对司法、政治和三权分立理论具有重要影响，我们的建议建立在这些见解的基础上。通过继续开发新的法律影响力的经验衡量标准，并对这些衡量标准进行严格的测试，我们提供了一种评估现有政府关系理论的新方法。因此，这种方法有可能产生更广泛的社会影响，为学术研究人员、政策分析师、法律从业人员和对政府关系和民主理论感兴趣的个人提供对政府运作的新见解。未来对立法进程的研究将能够依靠我们的测量来确定立法对社会的影响；未来对司法进程的研究将能够依靠我们的测量来确定法律影响对法官的系统性影响；以及未来关于政府间关系的研究将能够依靠我们的测量来评估与民主治理和宪法三权分立相关的各个方面。

AbstractLEGISLATURES AND THE JUDICIARY: THE EFFECTS OF STATUTORY CONSTRAINT This proposal focuses directly on the language included in congressional statutes and is aimed at assessing the extent to which statutory language is used to control the decisions that state and federal judges make. Intellectual Merit Evaluating the tension between the legislative and judicial branches has been difficult because of a lack of empirical measures across the multiple dimensions of law and politics. While numerous analyses have empirically demonstrated the influence of ideology, a similar body of literature has not emerged for the quantitative analysis of legal influences. Consequently, theoretical development has tended to focus on the ideology of judges and members of Congress to the detriment of legal influences. Although qualitative research reinforces the conventional wisdom about legal influences, "the real question is not whether such behavior exists at all but whether it exists at systematic and substantively meaningful levels" (Spaeth and Segal 1999, 7). Our research project develops an empirical measure of a new legal dimension--statutory constraint--and tests the measure across decisions in state and federal courts. It contributes to broader development of theory by allowing scholars to evaluate relationships among governmental institutions across legal, attitudinal, and institutional dimensions. Additionally, our research offers an alternative approach for examining separation-of-powers relationship between legislatures and judiciaries. We develop this approach by examining how federal and state legislatures attempt to use the language of statutes to control the decision making process of judges. Each, we argue, possesses the ability to constrain judicial behavior by passing statutes containing detailed language. To investigate this thesis we borrow from the bureaucratic politics literature to introduce and test a new measure of statutory constraint. This measure permits a rigorous examination of the relationship between law and politics (i.e., between statutory constraint and ideological preferences). The hypotheses we shall test in this research project build upon our previous research, showing that a Congress successfully controls judicial behavior through statutory language. Here, we attempt to improve our theoretical knowledge by examining the tradeoff between politics and law in judicial decision making. Broader Impact These initial results have important implications for theories of judicial politics and separation-of-powers and our proposal builds upon these insights. By continuing to develop new empirical measures of legal influence, and subjecting those measures to rigorous tests, we offer a new approach to evaluating existing theories of governmental relations. Consequently, this approach has the potential to make a broader social impact by providing academic researchers, policy analysts, legal practitioners, and individuals interested in governmental relations and democratic theory with new insights into governmental operations. Future research on the legislative process will be able to rely on our measure to determine the impact that legislation has on society; future research on the judicial process will be able to rely on our measure to determine the systematic impact of legal influences on judges; and future research on inter-governmental relations will be able to rely on our measure to evaluate various aspects associated with democratic governance and the constitutional separation-of-powers.