TY  - BOOK
AU  - Fischman,Joshua B.
TI  - Estimating Preferences of Circuit Judges: a Model of Consensus Voting
SN  - 00222186
AV  - HB73 JOU 
PY  - 2011///
CY  - Chicago
PB  - University of Chicago Press
KW  - Ambivalence
KW  - Appellate courts
KW  - Dissenting opinions
KW  - Federal circuit courts
KW  - Judges
KW  - Liberalism
KW  - Modeling
KW  - Parametric models
KW  - Voting
N2  - This paper develops a consensus voting model for estimating preferences of federal circuit court judges. Unlike standard ideal point models, which assume that judges vote sincerely for their preferred outcomes, the consensus model accounts for the norm of consensus in the courts of appeals by including a cost of dissent in the judicial utility function. A test of the consensus voting model on a data set of asylum appeals demonstrates that it provides a substantially better fit than a comparable sincere voting model and also generates more accurate predictions of voting probabilities. The model generates credible estimates of the impact of panel composition on case outcomes, which is surprisingly large in the asylum cases. Even though 95 percent of these decisions were unanimous, roughly half of the cases could have been decided differently if assigned to different panels
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1086/661512
ER  -