Empirical Legal Studies

Empirical Contours of the Political Question Doctrine

Amid the enduring and varied debates about the political question doctrine, motivated by the Supreme Court's 1962 Baker v. Carr decision, the scholarly commentary shares one key attribute. Specifically, it dwells on the Supreme Court. Such a focus is ironic as while the Court has only rarely applied the political question doctrine, lower federal courts, by contrast, have invoked the doctrine "as a basis for dismissal in hundreds of cases." Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative (descriptive) methods, in a recent paper, The Real Political Question Doctrine, Curtis Bradley (Chicago) and Eric Posner (Chicago) explore how the political question doctrine has operated in the lower courts since the Supreme Court's Baker decision.

The authors find that lower courts use the doctrine to "evaluate their own institutional capacity to resolve politically sensitive disputes. It is the lower courts’ more limited capacity compared to the Supreme Court that explains the lower courts’ heavier reliance on the doctrine." More specifically, "the political question doctrine is a screening mechanism that the lower courts use to take account of limits on their institutional capacity. The Supreme Court has less need for this mechanism, so most of the doctrine’s life must be found in the foothills rather than at the summit of Mount Olympus. From this standpoint, the doctrine is not moribund but full of life. It is not limited in the ways suggested by the 'classical' or 'functional' theories. The lower court practice is best captured by Bickel’s prudential theory." An excerpted abstract follows.

"... We provide the first empirical account of how the doctrine has operated in the lower courts since Baker. Our account is based on both a quantitative analysis of a sample of these decisions and on a qualitative review of these and other decisions. This account reveals a political question doctrine that is substantially different from the one described in most scholarship: it is more vibrant, heavily focused on foreign affairs, often applied in non-constitutional cases, more prudential, and not a permanent disallowance of judicial review...."

The Impact of Increased "Sunlight" on Police Traffic Stops

Complicated legal and policy issues incident to policing--and conflicts with citizens the police serve--persist and continue to motivate empirical work. One under-studied aspect, however, involves the degree to which, if any, adverse (digital) media coverage of instances of police brutality informs police conduct going forward. Policing the Police: Examining the Role of News
Reports on Racially-Biased Policing reflects a recent effort at this difficult research question.

In their paper, Uttara Ananthakrishnan (Wash.--Business) et al., set out to assess the impact of public media accounts of police misconduct/violence from January 2013 to May 2018 (N=6,026) on police-initiated traffic stop data drawn from 227 counties across 18 states. The authors execute a DiD model that, because police traffic stop outcomes are "naturally tied to counties," compares "the change in the number of police stops in counties exposed to news reports with the same change in control counties that did not have news reports about their policing incidents during the same period.” Among the paper's findings is that news reports on fatal uses of police force on minorities have a "negative impact on police stops of minorities but not on Whites, on average.” An excerpted abstract follows.

"... However, it is theoretically unclear whether the reporting of excessive use of police force on minorities can have a tangible impact on subsequent policing outcomes. In this paper, we aim to answer the question of whether and how digital news on police brutality is effective in shaping subsequent police actions. To address this question, we construct a cross-sectional dataset of news reports of police violence and police traffic stop records. Under a difference-indifference framework, we find that news reports on police brutality reduces police stops of minorities. Additionally, we find that news with sad frames are more effective in effectuating change in policing behaviors. Finally, we learn that the impact of news reports are less effective in minority-dominated areas and high-crime areas."

Data on Naturalization

Naturalization grants immigrants a host of new and important rights, privileges, and opportunities. While a growing empirical literature focuses on such issues as who is willing to naturalize and why, barriers to seeking naturalization, and the impact of obtaining citizenship on the social, economic, and political integration of immigrants, comparatively less is known about government determinations of who is approved or denied once a naturalization application is submitted to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Drawing on new administrative data obtained from USCIS (N=2,687,101 non-military applications adjudicated between October 2014 and March 2018), in their paper, The Importance of Race, Gender, and Religion in Naturalization Adjudication in the United States, Emily Ryo (USC) and Reed Humphrey (Wash.—pub. policy) find significant group disparities in naturalization approvals based on applicants’ race/ethnicity, gender, and religion, controlling for individual applicant characteristics, adjudication years, and variation between field offices.

More specifically, the paper finds that “non-White applicants and Hispanic applicants are less likely to be approved than non-Hispanic White applicants, male applicants are less likely to be approved than female applicants, and applicants from Muslim-majority countries are less likely to be approved than applicants from other countries. In addition, race/ethnicity, gender, and religion interact to produce a certain group hierarchy in naturalization approvals. For example, the probability of approval for Black males is 5 percentage points smaller than that of White females. The probability of approval for Blacks from Muslim-majority countries is 9 percentage points smaller than that of Whites from other countries. The probability of approval for females from Muslim majority countries is 6 percentage points smaller than that of females from other countries. This study contributes to our understanding of the nature of inequalities present in agency decisionmaking in the naturalization process.”

Everything You Wanted to Know About Tables (in Stata)

Throughout the second-half of 2021, the Stata Blog ran a 7-part series on generating various tables. A single link to the 7-part series is here.