Appellate Lawmaking in a Judicial Hierarchy

Principal-agent relations are replete in politics; politicians are agents of electorates, bureaucrats are agents of executives, lower courts are agents of upper courts, and much more. Commonly, principals are modeled as the rule-making body and agents as the rule-implementing body. However, principals often delegate the authority to make the rules themselves to their agents. The relationship between the lower federal courts and the Supreme Court is one such example; a considerable portion of the law (rules) is made in the lower federal courts with the Supreme Court serving primarily as the overseer of those lower courts’ decisions. In this article, we develop and test a principal-agent model of law (rule) creation in a judicial hierarchy. The model yields new insights about the relationship among various features of the judicial hierarchy that run against many existing perceptions. For example, we find a non-monotonic relationship between the divergence in upper and lower court preferences over rules and the likelihood of review and reversal by the Supreme Court. The empirical evidence supports these derived relationships. Wider implications for the principal-agent literature are also discussed.

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The Interplay of Ideological Diversity, Dissents, and Discretionary Review in the Judicial Hierarchy: Evidence from Death Penalty Cases

The Journal of Politics ◽

10.1017/s0022381614000619 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 76 (4) ◽

pp. 1074-1088 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Deborah Beim ◽

Jonathan P. Kastellec

Keyword(s):

Death Penalty ◽

Judicial Hierarchy

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The Relationship between Islamic and Customary Law in the Sudan

Journal of African Law ◽

10.1017/s0021855300000498 ◽

1960 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 9-16 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Sayyid Muhammad Abu Rannat

Keyword(s):

Integrated System ◽

Customary Law ◽

Civil Justice ◽

Form Part ◽

Local Courts ◽

Set Up ◽

Civil Courts ◽

The Relationship ◽

Judicial Hierarchy

I do not wish to trouble you with the details of the system of courts in the Sudan, which is extremely complicated, but it is necessary to sketch the bare outlines. For some time it has been true to say that the Sudan has an “integrated” system in that the Local Courts form part of the judicial hierarchy and come under the supervision of the judiciary rather than the executive. But it would be misleading to call the system “unified”, as the judiciary is split into two quite separate hierarchies: the Sharia Division of which the Grand Kadi is the head, and the Civil Division over which I have the honour to preside. Within the Civil Division there are three main types of courts: “Civil Courts” as established under the Civil Justice Ordinance, Native Courts set up under the Native Courts Ordinance in the six Northern Provinces, and Chiefs Courts set up by the Chiefs’ Courts Ordinance in the three Southern Provinces.

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Penerapan Peradilan Adat Berbasis Kuasi Yudisial Dalam Memutus Sengketa Adat

Legalitas: Jurnal Hukum ◽

10.33087/legalitas.v12i2.225 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 260

Author(s):

Al Araf Assadallah Marzuki

Keyword(s):

Dispute Resolution ◽

National Court ◽

District Court ◽

Domestic Court ◽

Legal Remedy ◽

Legal Uncertainty ◽

Customary Court ◽

Legal Force ◽

Judicial Hierarchy

The customary court is not a judicial institution that can decide a dispute with the direction of justice as in the national court so that recognition of customary decisions does not get permanent legal force which results in legal uncertainty in dispute resolution through customary court institutions. Thus, there is an idea that is offered in this research that implements customary courts as quasi-judicial in resolving customary disputes. Through normative juridical research, it is found that: first, the position of customary courts is only limited to deliberative dispute resolution, and in the judicial hierarchy its position is not recognized. Second, the quasi-judicial model that can be applied in customary courts can emulate KPPU in deciding disputes where to obtain permanent legal force, the KPPU's decision needs to be ruled by a district court, and if some object to the verdict, they can file an objection legal remedy in the domestic court. a period of 14 days from receipt of the decision on the parties.

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Competing signals in the judicial hierarchy

Journal of Theoretical Politics ◽

10.1177/0951629819850626 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 31 (3) ◽

pp. 308-329 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Joshua A Strayhorn

Keyword(s):

Formal Model ◽

Selection Process ◽

Crowding Out ◽

Lower Court ◽

Canonical Models ◽

Case Selection ◽

The Us ◽

Informational Cues ◽

Source Of Information ◽

Judicial Hierarchy

Political principals often face information deficits. This is especially true of the US judicial hierarchy; extant theories of ideological monitoring in this setting have therefore explored informational cues such as lower court ideology or dissent. Canonical models of this setting, however, have omitted litigants, implicity assuming they are not an important source of information. This paper develops a formal model that considers whether litigants can credibly signal information about noncompliance, and how litigants’ signals interact with the cues of ideology and dissent. The model shows that litigant signals can be highly informative about doctrinal compliance, sometimes even crowding out the need for other signals. By contrast, litigants face difficulty communicating information about case importance; dissent, however, can be highly informative on this dimension. Accordingly, some informational cues may only influence limited aspects of the high court’s case selection process.

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