Prof. Kritzer’s Study of Polarization in Federal District Courts is Summarized on Law360

Law360 has summarized a study by Professor Herbert Kritzer and two collaborators that was recently posted on SSRN. The study shows that decisional patterns by federal district judges have becoming increasingly polarized based on the party of the appointing president. The study, which considered over 115,000 federal court decisions between 1934 and 2014, also showed that this increased polarization was due to increasing conservatism by appointees of Republican presidents.