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Judges' Role Orientations, Attitudes, and Decisions: An Interactive Model*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

James L. Gibson
James L. Gibson*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
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Abstract

Despite almost two decades of behavioral research, our models relating the key variables in judicial decision making are incomplete and inadequate. In particular, the impact of two widely used variables, judges' attitudes and role orientations, is poorly understood. While there appears to be a consensus that attitudes and role orientations are important predictors of behavior, no research has been successful in developing a comprehensive model capable of predicting judges' behaviors. This article's objective is the development of a single model incorporating attitudes, role orientations, and decision-making behavior. While attitudes and role orientations taken singly explain insignificant amounts of the variation in behavior, an interactive model of attitudes and role orientations is shown to be extremely useful for understanding behavior. Although this research focuses on the sentencing decisions of Iowa trial court judges, the proposed model is potentially applicable to all instances of decision making.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , September 1978 , pp. 911 - 924
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1978

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Footnotes

*

The author wishes to acknowledge the extremely helpful comments on earlier versions of this article by Professors Beverly B. Cook, David Gow, Justin Green, and Thomas G. Walker.

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