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Rules, Standards, and Lower Court Decisions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Joseph L. Smith  and
James A. Todd
Joseph L. Smith
Affiliation:
University of Alabama
James A. Todd*
Affiliation:
University of Alabama
*
Contact the corresponding author, James A. Todd, at todd022@bama.ua.edu.
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Abstract

This paper evaluates the impact of a higher court articulating doctrine as either a “rule” or a “standard.” The legal doctrine we evaluate concerns police searches based upon information supplied by confidential informants. The Supreme Court’s Aguilar-Spinelli test was a rule, and its Illinois v. Gates “totality of the circumstances” test is a standard. Using a data set of circuit court opinions from 1951 to 1999, we compare circuit-level implementation of these two doctrines. The results suggest that rules are more effective than standards at constraining ideological voting in lower courts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Fall 2015 , pp. 257 - 275
Copyright
© 2015 by Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

An earlier version of this paper was presented on a panel at the 2012 annual conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois. The authors would like to acknowledge the valuable comments of Michael Salamone and Christopher Parker on that panel.

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