Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T22:46:24.182Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Human Capital in Court: The Role of Attorney Experience in US Supreme Court Litigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Michael J. Nelson  and
Lee Epstein
Michael J. Nelson*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University, USA
Lee Epstein
Affiliation:
Washington University in St. Louis, USA
*
Contact the corresponding author, Michael J. Nelson, at mjn15@psu.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Human capital theory suggests that work experience acquired through on-the-job-training primes people to be more successful. Empirical validations of this hypothesis are numerous, but limited evidence of the relevance of human capital for courtroom advocacy exists. We examine whether the outcomes obtained by experienced attorneys are significantly better than the outcomes they would have obtained as novices. Adopting a strategy for credible causal inference that could be applied to almost any peak court, the analysis shows that attorneys with experience, relative to first timers, are significantly and consistently more likely to win their cases and capture the votes of judges.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Spring 2022 , pp. 61 - 85
Copyright
© 2022 Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We are grateful to Adam Feldman and Timothy R. Johnson for sharing their data and to William M. Landes, Adam Liptak, Kevin McGuire, Eric Posner, and participants at workshops at National Taiwan University, the University of Bergen, the University of Chicago, and the University of Kansas for offering valuable insights. Epstein thanks the National Science Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation for supporting her work on judicial behavior. The data, code, and documentation to replicate all analyses in this article are in the JLC Dataverse at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/OEZKW4.

References

Abrams, David S., and Albert H. Yoon. 2007. “The Luck of the Draw: Using Random Case Assignment to Investigate Attorney Ability.” University of Chicago Law Review 74 (4): 1145–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alarie, Benjamin, and Andrew J. Green. 2017. Commitment and Cooperation on High Courts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Areheart, Bradley A. 2018. “The Top 100 Law Reviews: A Reference Guide Based on Historical USNWR Data.” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3026293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashenfelter, Orley, and Kathryn Graddy. 2003. “Auctions and the Price of Art.” Journal of Economic Literature 41 (September): 763–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barro, Robert J. 2001. “Human Capital and Growth.” American Economic Review 91 (2): 12–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baum, Matthew A., and David A. Lake. 2003. “The Political Economy of Growth: Democracy and Human Capital.” American Journal of Political Science 47 (2): 333–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary S. 1962. “Investment in Human Capital: A Theoretical Analysis.” Journal of Political Economy 70 (5): 9–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary S. 1964. Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Becker, Gary S. 2007. “Health as Human Capital: Synthesis and Extensions.” Oxford Economic Papers 59 (3): 379–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bencze, Mátyás, and Gar Yein Ng, eds. 2018. How to Measure the Quality of Judicial Reasoning. Cham: Springer Nature.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bertrand, Marianne, Matilde Bombardini, and Francesco Trebbi. 2014. “Is It Whom You Know or What You Know? An Empirical Assessment of the Lobbying Process.” American Economic Review 104 (12): 3885–920.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birkby, Robert H., and Walter F. Murphy. 1964. “Interest Group Conflict in the Judicial Arena: The First Amendment and Group Access to the Courts.” Texas Law Review 42 (7): 1018–48.Google Scholar
Biskupic, Joan, Janet Roberts, and John Shiffman. 2014. “The Echo Chamber.” Reuters special report. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/scotus/.Google Scholar
Black, Ryan C., and Ryan J. Owens. 2012. The Solicitor General and the United States Supreme Court. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanes i Vidal, Jordi, Mirko Draca, and Christian Fons-Rosen. 2012. “Revolving Door Lobbyists.” American Economic Review 102 (7): 3731–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, Christina L., Lee Epstein, and Andrew D. Martin. 2010. “Untangling the Causal Effect of Sex on Judging.” American Journal of Political Science 54 (2): 389–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brenner, Saul. 1993. “Freshmen Justices on the United States Supreme Court: A Bibliographic Overview of the Social Science Studies.” Law Library Journal 85 (4): 829–36.Google Scholar
Chang, Yun-chien, Kong-Pin Chen, and Chang-Ching Lin. 2019. “Knowledge in Youth Is Wisdom in Age: An Empirical Study of Attorney Experience in Torts Litigation.” https://ssrn.com/abstract=2628171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choi, Stephen J., Mitu Gulati, and Eric A. Posner. 2013. “How Well Do Measures of Judicial Ability Predict Judicial Performance?” International Review of Law and Economics 33 (March): 37–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cochran, William G., and Donald B. Rubin. 1973. “Controlling Bias in Observational Studies: A Review.” Sankhyā: The Indian Journal of Statistics A 35 (4): 417–66.Google Scholar
Congleton, Roger D., and Yongjing Zhang. 2013. “Is It All about Competence? The Human Capital of U.S. Presidents and Economic Performance.” Constitutional Political Economy 24:108–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corley, Pamela C. 2008. “The Supreme Court and Opinion Content: The Influence of Parties’ Briefs.” Political Research Quarterly 61 (3): 468–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenberg, Theodore, Talia Fisher, and Issi Rosen-Zvi. 2011. “Israel’s Supreme Court Appellate Jurisdiction: An Empirical Study.” Cornell Law Review 96 (4): 693–726.Google Scholar
Elbardissi, Andrew W., Antoine Duclos, James D. Rawn, Dennis P. Orgill, and Matthew J. Carty. 2013. “Cumulative Team Experience Matters More Than Individual Surgeon Experience in Cardiac Surgery.” Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery 145 (2): 328–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Epstein, Lee, and Jack Knight. 1998. The Choices Justice Make. Washington, DC: CQ Press.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee, and Joseph F. Kobylka. 1992. The Supreme Court and Legal Change: Abortion and the Death Penalty. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee, and Eric Posner. 2016. “Supreme Court Justices’ Loyalty to the President.” Journal of Legal Studies 45 (2): 401–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, Adam. 2016. “Who Wins in the Supreme Court? An Examination of Attorney and Law Firm Influence.” Marquette Law Review 100 (2): 429–58.Google Scholar
Fisher, Jeffrey L. 2013. “A Clinic’s Place in the Supreme Court Bar.” Stanford Law Review 65 (1): 136–202.Google Scholar
Fong, Christian, Chad Hazlett, and Kouske Imai. 2018. “Covariate Balance Propensity Score for a Continuous Treatment: Application to the Efficacy of Political Advertisements.” Annals of Applied Statistics 12 (1): 156–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frederick, David C. 2005. “Supreme Court Advocacy in the Early Nineteenth Century.” Journal of Supreme Court History 30 (1): 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelman, Andrew, and Jennifer Hill. 2006. Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grendstad, Gunnar, William R. Shaffer, and Eric Waltenburg. 2015. Policy Making in an Independent Judiciary: The Norwegian Supreme Court. Colchester: ECPR.Google Scholar
Haire, Susan Brodie, Stefanie A. Lindquist, and Roger Hartley. 1999. “Attorney Expertise, Litigant Success, and Judicial Decisionmaking in the U.S. Courts of Appeals.” Law and Society Review 33 (3): 667–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Matthew E. K. 2018. What Justices Want: Goals and Personality on the US Supreme Court. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanretty, Chris. 2020. A Court of Specialists: Judicial Behaviour in the UK Supreme Court. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haynie, Stacia L., Reginald S. Sheehan, Donald R. Songer, and C. Neal Tate. 2007. National High Courts Database. http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/poli/juri/highcts.htm.Google Scholar
Hinkle, Rachael K., Andrew D. Martin, Jonathan D. Shaub, and Emerson H. Tiller. 2012. “A Positive Theory and Empirical Analysis of Strategic Word Choice in District Court Opinions.” Journal of Legal Analysis 4 (2): 407–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ho, Daniel E., Kosuke Imai, Gary King, and Elizabeth A. Stuart. 2007. “Matching as Nonparametric Preprocessing for Reducing Model Dependence in Parametric Causal Inference.” Political Analysis 15 (3): 199–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ho, Daniel E., and Donald B. Rubin. 2011. “Credible Causal Inference for Empirical Legal Studies.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 7:17–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard, J. Woodford. 1968. Mr. Justice Murphy: A Political Biography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hume, Robert J. 2017. Ethics and Accountability on the US Supreme Court. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Iacus, Stefano M., Gary King, and Giuseppe Porro. 2011. “Multivariate Matching Methods That Are Monotonic Imbalance Bounding.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 106 (493): 345–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iacus, Stefano M. 2019. “A Theory of Statistical Inference for Matching Methods in Causal Inference.” Political Analysis 27 (1): 46–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Robert H. 1951. “Advocacy before the Supreme Court: Suggestions for Effective Case Presentations.” American Bar Association Journal 37 (11): 801–64.Google Scholar
Johnson, Timothy R., Paul J. Wahlbeck, and James F. Spriggs. 2006. “The Influence of Oral Arguments on the U.S. Supreme Court.” American Political Science Review 100 (1): 99–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katyal, Neal K. 2017. “Why Liberals Should Back Neil Gorsuch.” New York Times, January 31.Google Scholar
Lankina, Tomila, and Lullit Getachew. 2012. “Mission or Empire, Word or Sword? The Human Capital Legacy in Postcolonial Democratic Development.” American Journal of Political Science 56 (2): 465–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larsen, Allison Orr, and Neal Devins. 2016. “The Amicus Machine.” Virginia Law Review 102:1901–68.Google Scholar
Lazarus, Richard J. 2008. “Advocacy Matters Before and Within the Supreme Court: Transforming the Court by Transforming the Bar.” Georgetown Law Review 96 (5): 1487–563.Google Scholar
Levi, David F., and Mitu Gulati. 2008. “Judging Measures.” UMKC Law Review 77 (2): 381–413.Google Scholar
Loewenstein, Jeffrey A., and Leigh L. Thompson. 2006. “Learning to Negotiate: Novice and Experienced Negotiators.” In Negotiation Theory and Research, ed. Leigh L. Thompson, 77–98. East Sussex: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Manuelli, Rodolfo E., and Ananth Seshadr. 2014. “Human Capital and the Wealth of Nations.” American Economic Review 104 (9): 2736–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Andrew D., and Kevin M. Quinn. 2002. “Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999.” Political Analysis 10 (2): 134–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maruthappu, Mahiben, Barnabas Gilbert, Majd El-Harasis, Myura Nagendran, and Peter McCulloch. 2015. “The Influence of Volume and Experience on Individual Surgical Performance: A Systematic Review.” Annals of Surgery 261 (4): 642–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McAtee, Andrea, and Kevin T. McGuire. 2007. “Lawyers, Justices, and Issue Salience: When and How Do Legal Arguments Affect the U.S. Supreme Court?” Law and Society Review 41 (2): 259–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGuire, Kevin T. 1993. The Supreme Court Bar: Legal Elites in the Washington Community. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
McGuire, Kevin T. 1995. “Repeat Players in the Supreme Court: The Role of Experienced Lawyers in Litigation Success.” Journal of Politics 57 (1): 187–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGuire, Kevin T. 1998. “Explaining Executive Success in the U.S. Supreme Court.” Political Research Quarterly 51 (2): 505–26.Google Scholar
McGuire, Kevin T. 2000. “Lobbyists, Revolving Doors, and the U.S. Supreme Court.” Journal of Law and Politics 16 (1): 113–38.Google Scholar
McGuire, Kevin T., and Barbara Palmer. 1996. “Issues, Agendas, and Decision Making on the Supreme Court.” American Political Science Review 90 (4): 853–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mincer, Jacob. 1962. “On-the-Job Training: Costs, Returns, and Some Implications.” Journal of Political Economy 70 (5): 50–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morawetz, Nancy. 2011. “Counterbalancing Distorted Incentives in Supreme Court Pro Bono Practice: Recommendations for the New Supreme Court Pro Bono Bar and Public Pratice Communities.” New York University Law Review 86:131–206.Google Scholar
Morgan, Jacob. 2017. “Why the Millions We Spend on Employee Engagement Buy Us So Little.” Harvard Business Review, March 10.Google Scholar
Papay, John P., and Matthew A. Kraft. 2015. “Productivity Returns to Experience in the Teacher Labor Market.” Journal of Public Economics 130 (October): 105–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pickard, Harry. 2020. “The Impact of Career Politicians: Evidence from US Governors.” Kyklos 71 (1): 103–25.Google Scholar
Posner, Richard A. 2005. “Judicial Behavior and Performance: An Economic Approach.” Florida State University Law Review 32 (4): 1259–80.Google Scholar
Roberts, John G. 2005. “Oral Advocacy and Re-emergence of a Supreme Court Bar.” Journal of Supreme Court History 30 (1): 68–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salokar, Rebecca Mae. 1992. The Solicitor General: The Politics of Law. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A., and Harold J. Spaeth. 2002. The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shayo, Moses, and Asaf Zussman. 2011. “Judicial Ingroup Bias in the Shadow of Terrorism.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 126 (3): 1447–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smelcer, Susan Navarro, and Kenneth R. Thomas. 2010. “From Solicitor General to Supreme Court Nominee: Responsibilities, History, and the Nomination of Elena Kagan.” Congressional Research Service Report for Congress no. R41299. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41299.pdf.Google Scholar
Sommer, Udi, and Olga Frishman. 2016. “Translating Justice: The International Organization of Constitutional Courts.” Law and Policy 38 (2): 124–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staats, Joseph L., Shaun Bowler, and Jonathan T. Hiskey. 2005. “Measuring Judicial Performance in Latin America.” Latin American Politics and Society 47 (4): 77–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stern, Mark Joseph. 2018. “Why Is Lisa Blatt Endorsing Brett Kavanaugh?” Slate, September 4.Google Scholar
Szmer, John, Susan W. Johnson, and Tammy A. Sarver. 2007. “Does the Lawyer Matter? Influencing Outcomes on the Supreme Court of Canada.” Law and Society Review 41 (2): 279–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szmer, John, Donald R. Songer, and Jennifer Bowie. 2016. “Party Capability and the US Courts of Appeals: Understanding Why the ‘Haves’ Win.” Journal of Law and Courts 4 (1): 65–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Leigh L. 1990. “The Influence of Experience on Negotiation.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 26 (6): 528–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wahlbeck, Paul J. 1997. “The Life of the Law: Judicial Politics and Legal Change.” Journal of Politics 59 (3): 778–802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walsh, Mark. 2018. “Number of Women Arguing before the Supreme Court Has Fallen Off Steeply.” ABA Journal, August 1.Google Scholar
Wedeking, Justin. 2010. “Supreme Court Litigants and Strategic Framing.” American Journal of Political Science 54 (3): 617–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinshall, Keren, Lee Epstein, and Andy Worms. 2018. The Israeli Supreme Court Database. http://iscd.huji.ac.il.Google Scholar
Weiss, Debra Cassens. 2015. “SCOTUS Litigators Charge as Much as $1,800 an Hour, Filing Says.” ABA Journal, August 10.Google Scholar
Woodward, Bob, and Scott Armstrong. 1979. The Brethren. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Nelson and Epstein supplementary material
Download undefined(File)
File 410.7 KB