Inter-Court Relations in the American Legal System--II

公法文献中的一些研究分析了法律引用，以阐明美国司法制度的各个方面。我们以三种方式建立在这部文献的宝贵见解之上。首先，超越了只考虑司法等级中的一个法院或级别，我们探索了州法院和联邦法院各级司法机构的引用模式。其次，借助强大的IT能力，我们开发了新的技术，以传统技术无法实现的方式分析大量决策。第三，我们使用这些技术来检查在没有来自高等法院的实质性指导的情况下，下级法院制定政策的情况。我们将引用分析集中在宪法的一个特定主题--监管征用--中的司法裁决上。法律的这一领域之所以有吸引力，不仅是因为其内在的实质性吸引力，而且还因为最高法院参与的多样性。大法官们几乎没有提供指导，直到1978年，他们开始发布大量关于监管征用的裁决；这使我们能够在存在和缺乏来自高等法院的实质性指导的情况下对比下级法院的引用模式。我们的第一步是确定从20世纪初到现在的监管征用裁决的完整语料库。开发一种完成这项新任务的方法使我们能够在时间、管辖权和司法等级中定位相关的引文主体，并突出先例流动中的显著动态。我们还计划测试一些假设，探索引用模式与一系列变量之间的关系，这些变量包括，例如：特定法院的威望；一个法律机构的“成熟度”；案件数量；近似性；以及法律和政治行为者之间的网络。

A number of studies within the public law literature have analyzed legal citations to shed light on aspects of the U.S. judicial system. We build on the valuable insights of this literature in three ways. First, expanding beyond consideration of only a single court or level in the judicial hierarchy, we explore citation patterns throughout all levels of the judiciary in the state and federal courts. Second, drawing on powerful IT capabilities, we develop new techniques for analyzing a large pool of decisions in ways that would be infeasible with traditional techniques. Third, we use these techniques to examine the development of policy by the lower courts in the absence of substantial guidance from the High Court.We focus our citation analysis on the judicial decisions within a specific topic of constitutional law -- regulatory takings. This area of the law is attractive not only because of its intrinsic substantive appeal, but also because of the variation in the Supreme Court's involvement. The justices provided little guidance until 1978, when they began handing down numerous decisions on regulatory takings; this allows us to contrast lower court citation patterns in the presence and absence of substantial guidance from the High Court.Our first step is identifying the complete corpus of regulatory takings decisions from the early twentieth century to the present. Developing a methodology to accomplish this novel task enables us to locate the relevant body of citations in time, jurisdiction, and the judicial hierarchy, and to highlight notable dynamics within the flow of precedent. We also plan to test hypotheses exploring the relationship between citation patterns and a range of variables, including, for example: the prestige of particular courts; the "maturity" of a body of law; caseload volume; propinquity; and networks among legal and political actors.