How do collegial courts make law? This question is central to the study of judicial politics. For example, without knowing how collegial courts decide cases and issue legal rules, scholars cannot understand how judiciaries interact with legislative and executive branches in separation of powers systems, we cannot understand hierarchical relationships between higher courts and lower courts, and we cannot understand how and why the law changes over time. This workshop brings together a small group of foremost scholars actively involved in the study of collegial court decision-making. The goal of the workshop is to help push forward a burgeoning research agenda focused on identifying how the formation and implementation of legal rules is distinct from other forms of policymaking. The workshop examines four sets of questions implicated in this line of inquiry. First, how do collegial courts rule on cases (both the disposition and the declared rules justifying that disposition), and what role do concurrences play in this process? Second, the conference examines the empirical tools available to test these more nuanced theories of judicial decision making. Third, what do rules actually look like (e.g. why choose rules versus standards)? Fourth, what are the consequences of the placement of rules and the form rules take for future application of the law both in terms of how future litigants and how lower courts will behave. For example, the workshop examines how the shape of a legal rule, and the process of decision-making on the Supreme Court, affects the decisions of lower courts. Given that legal opinions are the product of group decision-making, and the weight of that opinion as law depend on the willingness of other justices to "sign on," how should a lower court respond to a majority opinion and (potentially) concurring view expressed by other justices in the majority?
