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Article: State Supreme Court decision making in confession cases
- Article from:
- Justice System Journal
- Article date:
- January 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright National Center for State Courts 2002. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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State Supreme Court Decision Making in Confession Cases*
The federal nature of the American judiciary suggests that a state court of last resort may evade decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court if those decisions do not comport with the preferences of the state supreme court judges or are in conflict with the prevailing ethos in the state. We offer a multiple principal agency model of state supreme court decision making. We posit that the decisions of state high courts are influenced by their judicial (the U.S. Supreme Court) and political (state elites or electorates) principals, as well as by more conventional factors. We test our theory by using a stratified random sample of state court of ...