Papers by Morgan Hazelton
Replication data for JLC article.
Journal of Law and Courts, 2021
Researchers often study the impact of legal change by investigating judges’ decisions and ignorin... more Researchers often study the impact of legal change by investigating judges’ decisions and ignoring litigants. Many scholars believe the Supreme Court’s decisions in Twombly and Iqbal increased how specific factual allegations must be to avoid dismissal, but studies generally fail to find an effect. Using text analysis, I find evidence that litigants and their lawyers changed the information they provided after the decisions in certain types of cases. These results call into question prior studies and illustrate the need to consider the behavior of litigants. They also help shed light on issues of access to courts and separation of powers.
The impact of judicial decisions on those individuals that the opinions primarily benefit or harm... more The impact of judicial decisions on those individuals that the opinions primarily benefit or harm is rarely the subject of scholarly inquiry. In fact, despite the common belief that an essential function of law is to allow individuals to plan, researchers often ignore the possibility of anticipatory actions by litigants when studying the impact of legal change. By neglecting the potential for strategic behavior, researchers risk producing biased results. Furthermore, the impact of law is likely hidden by such distortions when we focus on outcomes without accounting for selection and the response of the consumer population. In this paper, I consider if recent Supreme Court decisions regarding the federal pleading standard have changed the way represented litigants state their claims. The decisions are widely believed to have increased the level of detailed allegation required in a complaint in order to avoid dismissal but empirical studies on the matter have generally failed to find ...
Scholars and judges routinely cite collegiality concerns to explain judicial behavior, suggesting... more Scholars and judges routinely cite collegiality concerns to explain judicial behavior, suggesting that judges sometimes suppress public dissent for fear of angering colleagues. Outside of judicial politics, “collegiality” is theorized to affect nearly every aspect of politics, from patronage-fueled explanations of the appointments process to logrolling in legislative chambers. Yet, few studies have tested the extent to which collegiality concerns actually drive elite behavior. We explore collegiality by examining the effect of three measures of interpersonal contacts between federal circuit judges: whether they have their home chambers in the same city, the probability of serving together on a future panel, and years of cotenure on the circuit bench. We show that all of these measures can lead to a lower probability of dissent and substantially dampen the effect ideology has on the decision to dissent. We also demonstrate that shows cotenure decreases dissent in the Supreme Court.
American Politics Research, 2015
Many observers are concerned that campaign contributions could affect the decisions of elected ju... more Many observers are concerned that campaign contributions could affect the decisions of elected judges. However, the empirical correlation between contributions and judicial decisions is consistent with two different explanations of judicial behavior: (a) money influences judges or (b) contributors choose to support candidates with a similar philosophical or legal perspective. In this article, we take advantage of North Carolina’s shift to a voluntary public finance system for state Supreme Court candidates to obtain more credible estimates of the contributions–behavior relationship. Applying a difference-in-differences research design, we provide evidence that justices who opted into public financing became relatively less favorable toward attorney donors. We also find partial support for our hypothesis that participating justices became more moderate in their voting patterns. Taken together, these findings suggest that public financing reduced responsiveness to donors among partici...
Political Science Quarterly, 2017
preserve the stratified political, racial, and economic status quo of the old South. These policy... more preserve the stratified political, racial, and economic status quo of the old South. These policy innovations have since been widely accepted and codified, cloaked in race-neutral language that obscures their original intent. Congressional leaders and business owners, for example, worked to defeat President Richard Nixon's Family Assistance Plan because they feared that extending cash assistance to the millions of poor whites and blacks in the South might disrupt local low-wage labor markets, upsetting the political order by providing blacks with "a new base of economic security," decreasing "the effectiveness of economic reprisals-such as reductions in pay or loss of employment-that many employers used to intimidate blacks from voting" (p. 72). At times, the book's thorough efforts to trace each step of workfare's development can make its victory over welfare seem all but inevitable. However, this small note should be understood as the most minor of critiques. Bertram's study offers a vital corrective to our understanding of welfare reform and public assistance in the United States.
vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My time in the Political Science Department at Washington University in Saint... more vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My time in the Political Science Department at Washington University in Saint Louis has been filled with amazing people, including faculty, graduate students, and beyond. Andrew Martin and Jim Spriggs have been been fantastic advisors to me. I was lucky to have two such accomplished and generous mentors from which to learn about political science and research. Both are models of reasonableness and rigor. I feel privileged to have been part of the Center for Empirical Research in the Law under the direction of Andrew, who was exceedingly generous with his support. Jim also provided important guidance regarding how to approach research, academia, and life. Additionally, many other faculty members shared their knowledge and wisdom with me. In addition to my chairs, I have been blessed with a very talented and gracious dissertation committee. I am grateful to Pauline Kim, whose intelligence is only matched by her patience. Bill Lowry is a remarkable professor for whom I am just one member of a very large fan club. Finally, John Patty possesses the uncanny ability to both make me laugh and think deeply. Beyond my committee, I learned quite a bit about how to conduct oneself from my interactions with Randy Calvert, Jacob Montgomery, Gary Miller, and Melanie Springer, in addition to many other professors residing in Seigle Hall. My fellow graduate students have enriched my time in graduate school. From the first day of graduate school, Rachael Hinkle has been my partner in crime. We share a passion for judicial politics, law, and terrible jokes. I would have been lost without her support and wit. Additionally, Rachael provided invaluable technical advice and assistance with this dissertation. I was also fortunate to have been in CERL with some amazing people: Amanda Driscoll, Michael Nelson, Xun Pang, and Alicia Uribe, all of whom were fantastic sounding boards for all manner of issues. Bethany Friedrich has been a dedicated coordinator, editor, and friend. Although I overlapped with them only briefly, Ryan Black and Christina Boyd have always be very helpful with resources, guidance, and advice. Keith Schnakenberg kept me grounded and caffeinated.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2012
Review of Law & Economics, 2012
Despite an inherent kinship, the studies of political science and law spent many decades isolated... more Despite an inherent kinship, the studies of political science and law spent many decades isolated from one another. In recent years the two fields have become more and more integrated, with an increasing number of political scientists collaborating with law professors and joining law school faculties. Political science is a rigorous discipline that can benefit both legal scholars and lawyers. Public Law-the subfield of political science that studies law and courts-has much to offer in understanding how judges make decisions and how larger political and institutional contexts affect the legal system. Furthermore, law students can only benefit from exposure to the methodological approaches that are standard in political science. Enhanced integration of political science and law will inherently expand the knowledge and reach of lawyers and legal scholars due to the important contributions discussed in this article.
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Papers by Morgan Hazelton