International Conflicts and Decision Making on the Federal District Courts
Paul M. Collins, Jr., Kenneth L. Manning, Daniel A. Norton, and Robert A. Carp
The international environment influences domestic politics, particularly during times of war. The traditional governmental response to such crises is to curtail the civil rights and liberties of Americans in the name of national security. Often, challenges to these restrictive policies find their way into the federal court system. However, little is known about the systematic effects of these conflicts on the choices jurists make. To redress this deficiency, we investigate whether international conflicts influence the decision making of federal district-court judges by examining the choices those judges make during periods of both war and peace. In addition, we consider whether male and female jurists react differently to periods of international unrest. We find that female judges do respond to wars, deciding cases more liberally than in peacetime, but male judges exhibit no response. As such, our results suggest that gender is an important consideration in evaluating the judicial response to war.
ToC
JSJ
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