Separate Opinion Writing Under Mandatory Appellate Jurisdiction: Three-Judge District Court Panels and the Voting Rights Act

Abstract

Most of the empirical work on separate opinion writing by lower federal court judges examines the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Given the Supreme Court's discretionary jurisdiction, it is argued that dissenting opinions operate as a cue signaling that a case is worthy of review. Concurrences, on the other hand, allow judges to join dispositional majorities while still expressing differences in legal reasoning from the majority. Likely in an effort to minimize dissent, the behavior of circuit court judges is found to be less influenced by ideology when potential dissenters serve with them. Despite the specter of Supreme Court review, these works generally find that the motivation to write separately is based largely in ideologically differences among panelists and less so on preferences of the Supreme Court. What, however, does separate opinion writing look like when the Court's jurisdiction is mandatory, as it is over three-judge district court panels? Among other uses required by law, these district court panels are used to adjudicate cases arising under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These panels also differ from the traditional judicial structure by placing district court judges, who traditionally decide cases individually, in a multimember setting with another district court judge and a circuit court judge. Examining separate opinion writing on these panels, we find that ideological distance from the majority opinion writer is still an important factor. This, however, is conditioned by the preferences of the Supreme Court, which exert a much stronger influence over behavior than they do in the traditional appellate court setting.