How Courts Impact Federal Administrative Behavior. 2009. New York, NY: Routledge.

What impact do federal courts have on the administrative agencies of the federal government? How do agencies react to the decisions of federal courts? My book takes up these questions by examining the responses of federal agencies to the U.S. Courts of Appeals, revealing what happens inside agencies after courts rule against them. I use an original database to examine whether judicial opinions systematically influence administrative behavior, including whether agencies file certiorari petitions following adverse decisions, the amount of policy change they enact and the timing of their responses, and whether administrators cite circuit court decisions as precedent in subsequent proceedings. I also draw upon dozens of interviews with current and former administrators, taking readers behind the scenes of these organizations to reveal their internal procedures, their attitudes about courts, and their capacity to be influenced by a judge’s choice of words.

"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.

Hume, Robert J. 2007. "Administrative Appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court: The Importance of Legal Signals." Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 4: 625-649.

When do federal agencies appeal adverse circuit court decisions to the U.S. Supreme Court? It is hypothesized that features of judicial opinions, such as the basis of the court’s ruling and the evidence used to support it, can affect whether a petition is filed. Judges send signals in their opinions that discourage petitions, even though parties are otherwise under no legal obligation to refrain from seeking higher court review. Using an original database, this study finds that legal signals do influence the certiorari process, but that the filing of petitions is also affected by an agency’s ideological preferences and the likelihood of review by the Supreme Court.

Hume, Robert J. 2006. "The Use of Rhetorical Sources by the U.S. Supreme Court." Law & Society Review 40: 817-843.

This study considers whether U.S. Supreme Court justices use opinion content strategically, to enhance the legitimacy of case outcomes. This hypothesis is tested by examining the Court's use of rhetorical sources, which are references to esteemed figures and texts that corroborate the justices' views. The data are consistent with the position that justices use rhetorical sources strategically, citing them when the legitimacy of their actions is lowest, such as when they are overturning precedent, invalidating state or federal law, or issuing directives from a divided bench. The study also tests several other explanations for the use of these sources, such as legal considerations, the justices' ideologies, and efficiency concerns.

Klein, David E., and Robert J. Hume. 2003. "Fear of Reversal as an Explanation of Lower Court Compliance." Law & Society Review 37: 579-606.

Lower courts in the United States are generally responsive to specific precedents and trends in the decionmaking of their judicial superiors. In this article, we ask why. We test one popular explanation--that compliance can be attributed to judges' fear of having their decisions reversed--through an analysis of search and seizure cases decided in the U.S. Courts of Appeals between 1961 and 1990. Since the Supreme Court cannot reverse a decision unless it agrees to review it, we ask whether circuit judges are more likely to decide as the Supreme Court would be expected to when they face cases that are otherwise more likely to be reviewed by the Court. Finding that they are not, we conclude that fear of reversal cannot account for widespread circuit court compliance in these cases, nor, presumably, more generally. More broadly, our findings point to the importance of factors apart from supervisors and the threat of sanctions in determining subordinates' compliance.