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A POSITIVE THEORY AND EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF STRATEGIC WORD CHOICE IN DISTRICT COURT OPINIONS

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ABSTRACT
Supported by numerous empirical studies on judicial hierarchies and panel effects,
Positive Political Theory (PPT) suggests that judges engage in strategic use of opinion
content—to further the policy outcomes preferred by the decision-making court. In this
study, we employ linguistic theory to study the strategic use of opinion content at a
granular level—investigating whether the specific word choices judges make in their
opinions is consistent with the competitive institutional story of PPT regarding judicial
hierarchies. In particular, we examine the judges’ pragmatic use of the linguistic operations
known as “hedging”—language serving to enlarge the truth set for a particular
proposition, rendering it less definite and therefore less assailable—and “intensifying”—
language restricting the possible truth-value of a proposition and making a statement
more susceptible to falsification. Our principal hypothesis is that district court
judges not ideologically aligned with the majority of the overseeing circuit judges use
more hedging language in their legal reasoning in order to insulate these rulings from
reversal. We test the theory empirically by analyzing constitutional criminal procedure,
racial and sexual discrimination, and environmental opinions in the federal district courts
from 1998 to 2001. Our results demonstrate a statistically significant increase in the use of
certain types of language as the ideological distance between a district court judge and
the overseeing circuit court judges increases.

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Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

Journal of Legal Analysis

No. Panggil

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Penerbit

Oxford : Oxford University Press on behalf of The John M. Olin Center for Law., 2012

Deskripsi Fisik

Winter 2012: Volume 4, Number 2 , Journal of Legal Analysis

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

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Klasifikasi

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Tipe Isi

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Tipe Media

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Tipe Pembawa

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Edisi

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Subjek

HUKUM

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

agus

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