Baldy Center Distinguished Speaker Michael J. Nelson

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Baldy Center Distinguished Speaker Michael J. Nelson

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Event schedule and format subject to change, please check The Baldy Center event website for updates and registration: http://www.buffalo.edu/baldycenter/events/calendar.html

Michael J. Nelson (Pennsylvania State University)

"The Elevator Effect: Contact and Collegiality in the American Judiciary"

APRIL 1, 2022—DISTINGUISHED SPEAKER
ONLINE ONLY; 12:30pm
Co-sponsored with UB Department of Political Science.
Advanced registration is required. Zoom registration here.

Abstract: Prominent explanations for appellate review prioritize the ideological alignment of the lower and reviewing courts. We suggest that interpersonal relationships play an important role. The effect of an appellate judge's ideology on her decision to reverse depends on the level of interpersonal contact between the trial and appellate judge due to information provided by social and professional interactions. Relying on a dataset of all published Fourth Amendment search and seizure decisions from 1953-2010, we find that interpersonal relationships can dampen the effect of ideology in appellate review. When an appellate and trial court judge have frequent contact, the effect of ideology on the appellate judge's decision to reverse is essentially imperceptible. These findings speak to the importance of relationships in principal-agent arrangements generally and have implications for the structure of the federal judiciary and our understanding of the limits of ideological judicial decisionmaking.

Speaker Bio: Michael J. Nelson is Jeffrey L. Hyde and Sharon D. Hyde and Political Science Board of Visitors Early Career Professor in Political Science and associate professor of political science at the Pennsylvania State University. His research, funded by the National Science Foundation and Russell Sage Foundation, examines the causes and consequences of judicial power. He is the author of Judging Inequality and The Politics of Federal Prosecution.
BC-NELSON-Flyer2022.pdf
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