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Bargaining on Appellate Courts

We present a sequential bargaining model of a multi-member appellate court that extends similar models developed to study legislatures. In the model, judges decide a case and announce a legal rule compatible with the case decision. They employ a unique voting rule common to U.S. appellate courts: a compound rule in which all members of the Court vote on the case disposition using pure majority rule, but only the members of the majority dispositional coalition vote on policy. To achieve a definitive rule, the policy vote must reach a threshold equal to a numerical majority of the entire court. We model policy voting as a sequential bargaining game with random recognition, and allow strategic voting at the dispositional stage. The model offers new insights on strategic dispositional voting, and the impacts of case importance, ideal point distributions, and case locations on case dispositions and the content of majority opinions. JEL Codes: C78, H8, K40