A Bottom-up Approach to Lower Court Influence on the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
Abstract
Do lower court opinions in the United Kingdom influence the opinion content of the UK Supreme Court? Our project explores the dynamic relationship between the opinion writing tendencies of judges on the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and the content of decisions rendered by the still nascent UK Supreme Court. We offer a theoretical framework that accounts for the unique institutional design of the UK judiciary where professional norms, familiarity, and credibility should promulgate language adoption tendencies. Drawing on novel data from a diverse array of sources, our findings demonstrate that the language credibility of lower court opinions - characterized by its analytical, confident, and emotive attributes - affects the degree to which Supreme Court justices incorporate such language within their own opinions. Our work has new and important implications for studies on opinion writing, higher and lower court interactions, and comparative courts, more broadly.
Repository Citation
Bowie, Jennifer, Ali S. Masood, Elisha Carol Savchak, et al. “A Bottom-up Approach to Lower Court Influence on the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.” In Research Handbook on Judicial Politics, edited by Michael P. Fix and Matthew D. Montgomery. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023.
Publisher
Edward Elgar Publishing
Publication Date
9-5-2024
Department
Politics
Document Type
Book Chapter
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781035309320.00026
Notes
Chapter 16
Keywords
Judicial politics, Judicial behavior, Ideology, Judicial decision making, Judicial diversity, Comparative courts, Law and politics
ISBN
9781035309313
Language
English
Format
text
