What
affects the agenda setting process of the Supreme Court?
What
affects the decision making process of the Supreme Court?
What
causes people to think that the Supreme Court is legitimate?
What
causes people to be persuaded by Supreme Court decisions?
What
causes people to comply with Supreme Court decisions?
What
affects litigation rates? (across states, countries, counties...).
What
affects the harshness of sentencing?
What causes jury awards to defendants to be high?
What
causes people to think that the Supreme Court is legitimate?
What causes people to be persuaded by Supreme Court decisions?
What causes people to trust one another?
What causes people to support civil liberties and civil rights of groups that they do not like?
What causes people to be racist – or xenophobic?
What causes people to support redistributive policies? (distributive justice)
What causes people to consider the process more than the outcomes when they evaluate the judicial process?
What causes people to support harsh penalties for crimes?
What
affects litigation rates? (across states, countries, counties...).
What attributes of culture and institutions affects economic performance (pick some indicator of economic performance, such as growth).
Professor Baird,
I wanted to do my paper for
Law and Society on how political tolerance
and the legal culture (and
rule of law) affected the decision of Roe vs.
Wade. I don't know exactly how to go about
researching this subject or if it
would make for a good topic. Could you please offer me any suggestions on whether this would work and how I could refine my topic?
You question should be "what
causes ____?
It sounds like you mean
"judicial decision making."
And your theory would apply to more
than just Roe v Wade. You could isolate privacy cases, if you would like.
You need to think about what causes
judicial decision making, including ideological predispositions of justices,
public opinion, other institutions... and look at what other scholars have
found out about these possible causes.
The book by Epstein and Knight that
we have for class would help.
(If you are in justice systems - if
not, then check the library for a book called Choices Justices Make"
Here is a reply to another student's
email that applies to you as well (his/her topic is what causes sentencing):
Then, you can list a set of causes,
which then will become section headings.
This list serves as the outline for
your paper.
Detail what the literature says
about these causes and this becomes your literature review.
Now, you have an educated guess
about what causes sentencing and you want to add to what we already know - or
test your educated guess as the hypothesis. Perhaps take a random sample of all
criminal cases or a certain kind of criminal cases and spend a page talking
about what you are going to do. Then, talk about the implications - what do we
learn about the justice system or society or whatever you think is important
about what you learned in your research. (even though you do not actually do
that test, you just say that you do).
I am in your judicial system
class and I am afraid that
I really don't understand
exactly what you are expecting
for the paper bibliograhy
and outline due on Thurs. I
realize I should have asked
this question earlier, but I
have been swamped with tests
and papers in the last two
weeks. Everybody piled thier
assignments on during the
same two week period. I was
hoping that you could reply
sometime during the day on
Monday so that I can start to get everything together for you. Thanks for your
help.
You have a question: What causes
____.
There
are a number of causes of any political phenomenon and you should outline the
literature review in terms of those causes. So, I expect with the outline to
see a list of causes.
A bibliography should be self-explanatory, but it should be the list of sources that you used to come up with your list of causes and will be the list of sources that you will discuss in your paper.Around 25 academic sources is what I am expecting.
Dr. Baird,
I had a question about the paper. I have been looking at sources to do a paper on legitimacy of the judicial system, which I think should be a good topic, especially since we talked about it a little today in class. My question is about the research design. I guess I am lost as to what this should be. You talked about it being creative and coming up with hypotheticals, but I don't really know how this would fit the paper and I guess I have never dealt with a creative aspect of a political science paper. If you could maybe give me some guidance on this I would really apprecite it.
You should identify the sources of
perceptions of legitimacy, and there is a great deal of literature out there on
this subject. (at least support for high courts - legitimacy of the entire
system of justice is a little different and you would have to make inferences
about which findings would apply to the justice system from what we know about
sources of Supreme COurt support.)
One of the puzzles in this Supreme Court
legitimacy literature is whether satisfaction with particular decisions causes
people to support the court, or whether support for the Court causes people to
be satisfied with particular decisions.
You could come up with a way to test
that, using some kind of experimental design.
You could tell people one story and
see if they are different than those who listen to a different story.
Or you could do a random sample
survey and ask particular questions that would help you find whether certain
political phenomenon (i.e. support for liberty or interpersonal trust) actually
goes along with the perception that the Court is legitimate.
Or you could do something else
entirely.
Your job is to plan a way to find
out whether what you think is true, is true.
Does that make it easier to understand?
That does help, thank you
very much. The only thing that I am
still unsure
about is the results of this
research design. Where do we get
these? Do we
just make it up? For instance, you talked about a survey that
i could do,
would I just come up with "fake" results that would support my position? This is sort of what I got from the class discussion. Thanks very much for you help on this.
yes, you make them up.
Some people actually make up fake
tables, but that is not necessary.
I am glad to help.
Professor Baird,
I am in the law and society
class and I have been thinking about my paper
topic. I am quite interested in the issue of
abortion. I was thinking that
my question I want to
research is: Why are some people
pro-life and Why are
others pro-choice? I was thinking my research would lead me to
examine;
race, class, gender,
education, etc.. Am I on the right
track? If so, I
know that our paper topic
and bibliography is due on Thursday, Nov 1st.
Is
there a specific number of
references we need to hand into you? Or
do we
just give you what we
believe would be a good reference to use in our paper?
I would greatly appreciate any insight you have for my
topic. Thank you.
You should do a search on jstor -
with the words "abortion" and "attitudes" in the abstract
for both political science and sociology journals. THere is a huge literature
out there.
I like
your first topic because it contains a causal question - What causes crime?
There are many answers to that question - and you should
look to the sociological literature and political science literature to think
about crime rates. You may believe thta it is ignorance and poverty and I
am sure you are right - but remember you are supposed to be making an educated
guess about what you think causes crime. The educated part of the guess
comes from the literature review. Then, you design a project - you have
infinite resources and time and can change anything you want in your research
design, since you do not actually conduct it.
Are
there things that you could change that would affect the crime rate? If so,
then make that your research design.
If I
were you, I would look at the literature on crime rates - come up with a set of
answers - discuss the literature's treatment of those different answers (this
makes up the bulk of your paper).
Hope
that helps, and you are welcome to come talk to me or Andy in the meantime if
you have any more questions.