Expertise, experience, and ideology on specialized courts: The case of the court of appeals for the federal circuit

Banks Miller; Brett Curry

doi:10.1111/j.1540-5893.2009.00390.x

Expertise, experience, and ideology on specialized courts: The case of the court of appeals for the federal circuit

Banks Miller
, Brett Curry

Political Science & International Studies

University of Texas at Dallas

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

34 Scopus citations

Abstract

What roles do prior expertise and accumulated experience play in shaping ideologically consistent voting on a specialized court? Using a dataset of obviousness patent cases from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit spanning 1997-2007, we show that prior expertise enhances the influence of ideology on judicial decisionmaking, but that accumulated experience does not. In addition, we build on previous work and show that ideology is a factor in decisionmaking in technical areas of law, contrary to the received wisdom on patent cases.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	839-864
Number of pages	26
Journal	Law & Society Review
Volume	43
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5893.2009.00390.x
State	Published - Dec 2009

Scopus Subject Areas

Sociology and Political Science
Law

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10.1111/j.1540-5893.2009.00390.x

Cite this

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Expertise, experience, and ideology on specialized courts: The case of the court of appeals for the federal circuit

Abstract

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