experience has socialization effects that influence how the judge views presidential power. Members of an organization begin to internalize its goals and norms, and join social networks that reinforce those norms (Chao et al 1994). This explains why, for instance, some scholars have found that Supreme Court justices tend to drift leftward over time (Baum 2006). In addition to career experience, scholars also found that other sociological factors influence decision-making. For example, scholars have found that women decide cases differently in sex discrimination cases (Boyd, Epstein and Martin 2010). Hoiever, as Cross (2007) motes, while scholars have found that gender or race matter in specific instances in influencing decision making, as a whole they have not played a large role in influencing decision making. Moreover, judges with “elite” backgrounds rule differently than other judges on tax and NLRB adjudications (Brudney et al 1999; Schneider 2002, 2005). Clarity of Opinion Writing More recent developments in text analysis have made it easy to quantitatively analyze opinion content to analyze. Scholars studying the Supreme have found that the Supreme Court is more likely to induce compliance by lower courts and agencies by writing clearer opinions, as measured by Readability measures, such as the Fleish score or LINC tests, tests which analyze data to assess how well written a given corpus is (Owens et al. 2016). The theory is that when an opinion is more clearly written, it makes it easier for the lower court to understand and apply the precedent. In a recent book, Owens et al (2016) conclude that the Supreme Court strategically writes more clear opinions when it faces ideologically distant lower courts, when it decides cases involving poorly performing federal agencies, when it decides cases facing less professional legislatures and governors and when it rules contrary to public opinion.
of these measures to arrive at a variable that would indicate how clear an opinion is. [Write more about clarity – this is new stuff I added to show the text analysis angle]. Two of the most popular readability scores used – the Flesch-Kinkaid test and the Grade Level test – tap into how easy and at what grade level a corpus is. Others like the LINC test try to test the tone of the decision, such as whether the tone is positive or negative. Other scholars have looked at opinion clarity from the top downward; here I would hypothesize that appellate judges are more likely to defer to more clearly written opinions. Economic, Case and Control Variables I also included a host of economic and case-specific factors. As the outcome of labor cases could be influenced by present economic conditions, I included the inflation rate as a control variable, and in other specifications not referenced here, I alternatively included the unemployment rate. I included a variable concerning the number of cases, as the court could be more likely to rule in favor of labor if there are more allegations in the complaint (Taratoot 2013). The region where the case originated from could influence outcomes, as the South generally is more hostile to labor. In addition, I included circuit court fixed effects as an independent variable. As Sunstein et al. (2004) found, there are significant party differences vary across circuits, with the 3rd, 5th and 7th circuits having small party effects (less than 8) with the 9 circuit having large party effects (27%) in voting behavior. Moreover, any lawyer will advise that circuits have reputations for being more or less liberal or conservative, with the Ninth circuit being touted as unusually liberal and some of the southern circuits, namely the 4th, 5th and 11th circuits being seen as more conservative (Ying 2009; Fischmann 2009). In addition to circuit court fixed effects, I included year fixed effects. I also looked at whether the union involved in the case was a union that is a repeat litigant.