Politics and Decision-making in the Connecticut Federal District Court
| Publication year | 2021 |
| Pages | 73 |
77 CBJ 73. POLITICS AND DECISION-MAKING IN THE CONNECTICUT FEDERAL DISTRICT COURT
The United States District Court for the District of Connecticut traces its history to the earliest stages of the republic. Soon after the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1789,(fn1) the first federal judge in the Constitution State, Richard Law, received his commission and began presiding in New Haven and Hartford that same year.(fn2)
As the workload of the Connecticut district court has grown over 200 years, so has the number of jurists on its bench. Today, the court is the professional home to 18 active and senior Article III judges and magistrates, handing down decisions in Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, and Waterbury.(fn3) These judges come from different political backgrounds and bring a variety of experiences and perspectives to the federal bench.
Prior research, anecdotal evidence, and human experience all attest that differing jurists reveal diverse decision-making patterns,(fn4) which suggests that the judicial diversity found on the Connecticut bench may manifest itself in discernable patterns of judicial behavior. This might include, for example, partisan differences. Of course, an honest judge would not consciously allow his or her partisan persuasion to manifest itself in directing their rulings. However, judges may often possess attitudes that are consonant with the positions of the political party with which they identify. Political party may, therefore, be "a significant reference group on issues."(fn5) In
fact, between 1959 and 1998 at least 140 books, articles, dissertations, and papers in the legal and political science literatures reported empirical research identifying a link between judges' party affiliation and judicial decision-making ideology in the United States.(fn6)
However, little research has systematically investigated the existence of political decision-making patterns of Connecticut district court judges. This is unfortunate, because the existence of any decision-making patterns, and what these patterns may reveal, could provide useful information to those who study and practice before these courts.
This study is a quantitative analysis of published court rulings, investigating what political or public policy trends, if any, may be identified among the decisions handed down by Connecticut district court judges. As such, this work examines aggregate data on decision direction. It is perhaps useful to note that this legal research is somewhat different, in that it is not a discussion of the particular legal facts, decisions, and interpretation of case law. Rather, it is a macrolevel survey of decision-making trends in federal trial court outcomes in Connecticut.
In order to evaluate potential decision-making tendencies, a database of court decisions was created. The data were provided by 734 coded United States District Court decisions handed down from 1970 to 1998.
A case analysis methodology was used, consistent with that of comprehensive decision data sets on the United States Supreme Court(fn7) and United States Courts of Appeal(fn8) created with the support of the National Science Foundation.
Individual cases were textually analyzed and data were recorded for each decision. This information included the judge, the president who appointed the judge, and the judge's party affiliation.(fn9) The decisions were categorized into three broad case types: criminal justice, civil liberties and rights, and economic and labor regulation. The ideological direction of the decision, coded on a liberal/conservative dichotomy, was also recorded.(fn10)
Some cases were not coded, and thus not used in this study. These included cases that could not be easily classified in the aforementioned categories, as well as cases decid-
ed by judges who were outside of their home district.(fn11)
The decisions were selected from cases reported in the Federal Supplement. The Supplement, produced by West Publishing in St. Paul, Minnesota, is the primary source of published district court decisions. All types of cases are printed in the Federal Supplement. Indeed, it has been noted that West tends to "publish any writing which a sitting federal district judge sends in to the company."(fn12) And though this observation is now over 30 years old, the way in which West makes its decision to publish a case has not changed. This policy, along with the increase in the number of published decisions in recent years as a result of the rising number of judges and their ever-increasing workload (a fact reflected in the frequency of publication of Supplement volumes), has meant that the Federal Supplement provides an extremely valuable data resource of a large number and great diversity of published cases.
While the coded cases used in this study provide quality data for the study of district court decisions, the limitations of these data should be noted. Although the Supplement is the primary publication vehicle for district court opinions, it does not include all cases decided in the district courts. Only a small percentage of district court decisions are ever published.
The question of published versus unpublished decisions is an important one and deserves some discussion. Most district court judicial rulings are fairly routine matters, which is to be expected in trial courts.(fn13) These decisions are usually guided by facts, precedent, and established guidelines and procedures. Such routine decisions typically possess limited precedential value and many times do not warrant publication.
It is in these areas that judges often have limited dis-
cretion in their decision-making. Conversely, appellate courts tend to encourage the publication of rulings that make original contributions to case law, while discouraging the publication of routine matters.(fn14) Thus, published cases...
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