Examining oral argument in the Australian High Court and comparing to the U.S. Supreme Court, this article shows that institutional design drives judicial interruptive behavior. Many of the same individual- and case-level factors predict oral argument behavior. Notably, despite orthodoxy of the High Court as “apolitical,” ideology strongly predicts interruptions, just as in the United States. Yet, important divergent institutional design features between the two apex courts translate into meaningful behavioral differences, with the greater power of the Chief Justice resulting in differences in interruptions. Finally, gender effects are lower and only identifiable with new methodological techniques we develop and apply.

We argue that perceptions of the U.S. Supreme Court can be influenced by stimuli paired with state courts. People with low levels of court knowledge will exhibit an assimilation effect in which residing in a state with an elected supreme court increases perceptions of the Court being political. People with greater knowledge will demonstrate a contrast effect, meaning that the Court will be perceived as less political compared to an elected state court. Using existing survey data and a new survey experiment, we find evidence of the assimilation effect for low-knowledge participants. Our results imply that fundamental perceptions of the Supreme Court can be shaped by stimuli that are objectively unconnected to the Court, and that many people do not effectively differentiate between different types of court.

Do lower court judges influence the content of Supreme Court opinions in the United Kingdom? Leveraging original data, we analyze opinion language adoption practices of the UK Supreme Court. We advance a theory where the justices’ choices to adopt language from lower court opinions are influenced by Supreme Court-level attributes and Court of Appeal case characteristics. We uncover compelling evidence that UK Supreme Court justices incorporate language extensively from the written opinions of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. Our findings have significant implications for opinion formulation, doctrinal development, and higher and lower court interactions within comparative courts.

A growing theoretical literature identifies how the process of constitutional review shapes judicial decision-making, legislative behavior, and even the constitutionality of legislation and executive actions. However, the empirical interrogation of these theoretical arguments is limited by the absence of a common protocol for coding constitutional review decisions across courts and time. We introduce such a coding protocol and database (CompLaw) of rulings by 42 constitutional courts. To illustrate the value of CompLaw, we examine a heretofore untested empirical implication about how review timing relates to rulings of unconstitutionality (Ward and Gabel 2019). First, we conduct a nuanced analysis of rulings by the French Constitutional Council over a 13-year period. We then examine the relationship between review timing and strike rates with a set of national constitutional courts in one year. Our data analysis highlights the benefits and flexibility of the CompLaw coding protocol for scholars of judicial review.