A Court of Specialists: Judicial Behavior on the UK Supreme Court

by Chris Hanretty

Overview

This book offers the first quantitative study of decision-making on the UK Supreme Court. Covering the court's first ten years, it examines all stages of the court's decision-making process—from permission to appeal to the decision on the final outcome. The analysis of these distinct stages shows that legal factors matter. The most important predictor of whether an appellant will succeed in the Supreme Court is whether they've been able to convince judges in lower courts. The most important predictor of whether a case will be heard at all is whether it has been written up in multiple weekly law reports.

But "legal factors mattering" doesn't mean that judges on the court are simply identical expressions of the law. The nature of the UK's court system means that judges arrive on the court as specialists in one or more areas of law (such as commercial law or family law), or even systems of law (the court's Scottish and Northern Irish judges). These specialisms markedly affect behavior on the court. Specialists in an area of law are more likely to hear cases in that area, and are more likely to write the lead opinion in that area. Non-specialists are less likely to disagree with specialists, and so disagreement is more likely to emerge when multiple specialists end up on the panel. Although political divisions between the justices do exist, these differences are much less marked than the divisions between experts in different areas of the law. The best way of understanding the UK Supreme Court is therefore to see it as a court of specialists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780197509234
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/19/2020
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 5.70(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Chris Hanretty is Professor of Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Key concepts
Chapter 3 Who gets heard? Permission to appeal decisions
Chapter 4 Panel size
Chapter 5 Panel formation
Chapter 6 Who writes?
Chapter 7 Who dissents?
Chapter 8 Political patterns of dissent
Chapter 9 Who wins?
Chapter 10 Conclusions

References

Editorial Reviews

"Hanretty's A Court of Specialists paints a picture of the complexity of human decision-making and how political science identifies what factors might influence future judicial outcomes. Specialisation of the Justices is just one such factor, but a very important one. It is a commendable read: detailed, interesting and retaining a charming human touch, amidst the impressive presentation of data models. One can easily become immersed in the statistics, figures and models, but the human importance of the Court's work is never far from reach." — Emma Boffey, CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP , UK Supreme Court Blog

"The book is a brave attempt to provide statistical evidence showing that Supreme Court judgments are much more influenced by legal factors than by other factors... it is a thoroughly rigorous piece of research that deserves a wide readership." — Brice Dickson , Professor Emeritus at Queen's University Belfast, New Law Journal

"Hanretty is not a lawyer, and so is able to look at these things with a fresh and potentially objective eye. Whether he is right in his methods or conclusions is perhaps of secondary importance: the point is that he makes us look at the court through a different lens." — Paul Magrath, Head of Product Development and Online Content at ICLR - the leading supplier of law reports for England and Wales, ICLR Reviews

"A Court of Specialists Judicial Behavior on the UK Supreme Court is an important and novel book that students and scholars of judicial decision making should read." — Jennifer Bowie, Law and Politics Book Review

From the Publisher