Inter-Court Relations in the American Legal System—Using New Technologies to Examine Communication of Precedent (submitted January 2004, approved and funded through August 2005) Inter-Court Relations in the American Legal System: Using New Technologies to Examine Communication of Precedent II (submitted January 2005, approved and funded through August 2007) The project focuses on the articulation, development, and dissemination of legal precedent across the multi-tiered system of American courts. Our goal is to assess the dynamic inter-relationships among courts that are connected not only by design but also by mutual reliance upon a common set of reference points in the body of law. We explore a number of analytical questions regarding interactions among several judicial layers – including the US Supreme Court, all US Circuit and Districts, and all state supreme courts – by investigating the manner in which the judiciary have collectively developed the law on a particularly high-stakes political issue. We examine case law whose central question is whether land-use regulations implemented by state and federal government amount to “regulatory takings” under the Fifth Amendment. Because the universe of decisions numbers around 4000 decisions, we have developed several innovative analytical techniques that may be applied to a wide range of social science research. |