Collaborative Research: RUI: Dynamic Learning in Comparative Courts: A Cross-National Analysis of Judicial Decision Making in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom

普通法中级上诉法院通常在公众关注和监督之外运作良好。然而，近年普通法司法机构的上诉数目大幅增加，而高等法院聆讯的案件数目则保持相对稳定。随着案件数量的不断增加，中级上诉法院实际上是绝大多数司法上诉的最后法院。该项目开发、评估并推进了一个关于加拿大、美国和英国司法机构两级法院之间信息动态传输的新的创新理论框架。本研究首次在比较背景下全面评估了等级制度对司法决策的影响。具体而言，该项目探讨了在加拿大、美国和英国的下级中级上诉法院法官和高等法院同行之间的等级互动。本项目的比较重点为学者、政策制定者和实践者提供了令人兴奋的、创新的和新的机会，以探索司法系统和不同层次的司法系统内的意识形态和制度差异如何影响决策。该项目还有助于在比较背景下更广泛地理解法院，说明学者们不能轻易假设为美国法院开发的框架可以自动移植到其他国家。除了对学术领域的贡献外，拟议的项目还具有广泛的政策和社会影响。了解法官在这一动态决策过程中的行为，对于理解法律和政策是如何形成的，以及制度设计似乎是如何制约司法决策行为的，是必要的。为该项目收集的大量数量和质量数据将有助于共享一个关于上诉法院和对最高法院判例的等级反应的庞大信息数据库，以便将来进行各种分析。为这个项目收集的中级法院判决数据库是对国家高等法院数据库的宝贵补充。两级法院的新可靠数据的结合有可能为学术教师、学生和法律专业人员提供广泛的新分析。通过提供相当长一段时间内中级法院的可比数据，本研究将创造丰富的资源，使今后能够研究各种情况下的司法政策制定。这些数据将有利于既建立学者和他们的学生，包括博士生在相关学科寻求数据的比较司法论文项目。本项目还纳入了对法官的深度访谈所得的见解，以便更细致地了解法官理解其决策方法的方式。这些资源为本项目之外的许多分析提供了重要的前景。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Common law intermediate appellate courts have typically functioned well out of the limelight and out of public scrutiny. In recent years, however, the number of appeals within common law judiciaries have significantly increased while the number of cases heard by High Courts has remained relatively stable. In light of burgeoning caseloads, the intermediate appellate courts effectively serve as the court of last resort for the vast majority of judicial appeals. This project develops, assesses, and advances a new and innovative theoretical framework on the dynamic transmission of information between two tiers of courts across the judiciaries of Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. This study represents the first comprehensive assessment of hierarchical influences on judicial decision making within a comparative context. Specifically, this project explores hierarchical interactions between lower intermediate appellate court judges and their High Court counterparts in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The comparative focus of this project presents scholars, policymakers, and practitioners with exciting, innovative, and new opportunities to explore how ideological and institutional differences within judicial systems and different tiers of the judiciary can influence decision making. This project also contributes to a broader understanding of courts in a comparative context by illustrating that scholars cannot easily assume that frameworks developed for American courts are automatically transportable to other countries. Beyond contributions to the academic sphere, the proposed project has broad policy and social impacts. Understanding how judges behave in this dynamic decision making process is necessary for understanding how law and policy is developed and how institutional designs seemingly condition judicial decision-making behavior. The extensive data collection, both quantitative and qualitative, for the project will facilitate the sharing of a vast database of information on appellate courts and hierarchical responses to Supreme Court precedents for a variety of future analyses. The database of intermediate court decisions assembled for this project provides a valuable supplement to the National High Courts Database. The combination of new and reliable data on two tiers of the courts has the potential to foster extensive new analyses for academic faculty, students, and legal professionals. By providing comparable data on the intermediate courts over a substantial period of time, this study will create a rich resource that will enable future research on judicial policy making in a variety of settings. Such data will benefit both established scholars as well as their students including doctoral students throughout related disciplines seeking data for comparative judicial dissertation projects. This project also incorporates the insights gained from in-depth interviews with judges to provide a more nuanced understanding of the way judges understand their approach to decision making. These resources hold significant promise for many analyses beyond this project.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.