"The Impact of Judicial Opinion Language on the Transmission of Federal Circuit Court Precedents." 2009. Law & Society Review 43: 127-150.
This study examines the transmission of routine precedents among federal circuit court judges, using a sample of cases involving administrative law. It is hypothesized that citation patterns vary depending on features of judicial opinions, such as the legal grounding, the amount of supporting evidence, and the decision to sign the opinion. These features provide information about the importance of cases, which influences whether judges in other circuits cite them. The results affirm that judicial opinion language influences citation patterns but that additional factors also matter, such as the number of times a precedent has been cited within its circuit of origin, the ideological compatibility of a precedent with the preferences of other judges, and independent signals of case importance. The findings are significant because they suggest that judges who care about policy and are willing to take affirmative steps to encourage citations to their opinions have the capacity to influence whether judges in other circuits cite them.