Winning and Losing at the Federal District Courts

• In Event: New Measures in Judicial Politics

Abstract

In judicial politics literature, the conceptualizations of “winning” and “losing” have been distilled and simplified to the point that, while easy for researchers to understand, they do not reflect the nuances of litigious wins and losses found in trial court venues. While at the courts of appeals an outcome is an affirmance or reversal, a check on the application of law, an outcome at the trial courts centers on guilt, innocence, and the extent of each, but also manifests in minute decisions over the course of the case in response to the strategies of the other courtroom actors. This paper shifts the traditional dichotomous outcome of a case to a continuum and explores both traditional defendant and case characteristics and case process measures of the filing and treatment of motions as they relate to this more nuanced understanding of case outcome, which incorporates mode of disposition and disposition of the charges across the board. In doing so, this paper takes steps to discern the way the case’s process and minute decisions made on motions over the course of the trial affect the outcome, but in a way that more closely reflects the kinds of decisions judges make at the trial courts.

Author

• Madison Shanks, University of South Carolina