Does Law Matter? Theory and Evidence from Single-Subject Adjudication

Michael D. Gilbert

The Journal of Legal Studies, 2011, vol. 40, issue 2, 333 - 365

Abstract: Empirical studies have examined the effects of law and politics on judicial decision making, but many legal scholars are dissatisfied with how these studies account for law. This paper provides a novel survey technique for measuring law. I demonstrate this technique by examining judicial decision making in cases involving the single-subject rule. The rule limits ballot propositions to one "subject," a standard that vests judges with some discretion. Measures of law developed with the surveys strongly predict judges' votes in single-subject cases. Moving from the proposition in the sample with the lowest subject count to the one with the highest is associated with a 78-percentage-point increase in the likelihood of a judge finding a violation of the rule. Measures of ideology also predict judges' votes, especially when propositions are politically salient and when the law is indeterminate.

Date: 2011
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