Jeff Yates
Biographic Data
| ID | 3846388 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jeff Yates |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jeff |
| FAMILY NAME | Yates |
| SIGNATURE | YATES J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Binghamton University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0208-5119 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 217 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The People’s Attorney? Examining Public Trust in the Prosecutor’s Office
Prosecutors play a pivotal role in the American criminal justice system, exercising broad discretion over charging, plea bargaining, and sentencing recommendations. Yet despite their significant influence, we know surprisingly little about how the public perceives prosecutors – or the conditions under which trust in them is earned or lost. Building on research on political trust and leveraging new, granular survey evidence, we argue that public c…
Breaking Barriers: Analyzing Women Prosecutors’ Electoral Success
Although state prosecutors play a critically important role in the U.S. criminal justice system, these elections have received limited scholarly attention. Prosecutor elections historically have been dominated by men but have seen growing numbers of women candidates. Using data from elections between 2012 and 2020 in the 200 most populous prosecutorial districts, we assess the likelihood of a woman candidate running for the office and her chances…
The Increasing Nationalization of Local Elections: The Case of Prosecutors
To what extent are local races across the country being increasingly driven by politics at the national level? In this article, we examine the nationalization of elections for state executive branches' primary front line legal actors in the criminal courts—local prosecutors. We seek to better understand the factors influencing prosecutor election outcomes and why these types of elections have become more nationalized in recent years. More specifi…
Surveillance as the Past and Future of Public Administration
We trace how privacy-encroaching technologies have unfolded over the course of human history and how such technologies have influenced human societies and economies; governments have been central to this evolution. We maintain that surveillance is inevitable: that the future of public administration will depend on how administrators and others navigate deep rifts in public fear (yet acceptance) of surveillance and other means of data collection. …
Evaluating diffuse support for state high courts among individuals with varying levels of policy agreement
Background Courts are unusually vulnerable governing institutions that rely upon deeply seated public support and notions of institutional legitimacy to flourish and remain policy‐relevant. This diffuse support allows courts to be viable policy entities while simultaneously issuing edicts that are counter‐majoritarian. A recent debate centers on whether policy disagreement affects members of the public's diffuse support stores for the nation's Hi…
The Adoption of Robotics by Government Agencies: Evidence from Crime Labs
Perceptions of the Rule of Law: Evidence on the Impact of Judicial Insulation
Objectives The purpose of this article is to determine whether judicial insulation influences how individuals assess the rule of law. Methods We employ panel data models using data collected by the World Bank and other sources to differentiate the influence of two kinds of judicial insulation—designed (de jure) and implemented (de facto)—on individuals’ perceptions of the viability of the rule of law in their country. Results We find that while i…
Naming Names: The Impact of Supreme Court Opinion Attribution on Citizen Assessment of Policy Outcomes
The manner in which political institutions convey their policy outcomes can have important implications for how the public views institutions' policy decisions. This paper explores whether the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court communicates its policy decrees affects how favorably members of the public assess its decisions. Specifically, we investigate whether attributing a decision to the nation's High Court or to an individual justice influenc…
Do Policy Messengers Matter? Majority Opinion Writers as Policy Cues in Public Agreement with Supreme Court Decisions
Does the identity of a majority opinion writer affect the level of agreement a Supreme Court decision receives from the public? Using a survey experiment, we manipulate majority opinion authors to investigate whether individuals are willing to agree with Supreme Court opinions authored by ideologically similar justices even though the decisions cut against their self-identified ideological policy preferences. Our study provides insight into the e…
Judges, Litigants, and the Design of Courts
Two important perspectives on courts highlight fundamentally different elements of adjudication and yield distinct predictions about judicial outcomes. The Attitudinal Model of judicial voting posits judge ideology as a strong predictor of court outcomes. Alternatively, the Law and Economics perspective focuses on the settlement behavior of litigants and reasons that while judges may vote ideologically, litigants adapt to these ideological procli…
Assessing the Impact of State Judicial Structures on Citizen Litigiousness
Some researchers argue over the existence of a “litigation explosion,” while others seek to understand the causes of variation in citizen legal mobilization and rates of litigation among states. Existing studies have provided important insight into citizens’ propensity to invoke the state courts to settle disputes; however, there remain unresolved questions concerning state litigation rates. The authors argue that the structural aspects of state …
Homegrown Institutional Legitimacy: Assessing Citizens' Diffuse Support for State Courts
Since the United States Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, the public's support for the judicial system looms as an especially important concern. Although studies have confirmed that the Supreme Court's reservoir of public goodwill has remained largely intact following the politically divisive decision, the status of public support for other American courts has received little attention. This reflects a broader trend in judicial politics s…
Ideological Extremism and Public Participation
Objectives. Does aggregate ideological extremism reduce public participation? Does participation in governance processes fall when the social environment shifts to the extreme left or the extreme right of the political spectrum? Our main hypothesis is that the aggregate ideological orientation of the social environment constrains volunteerism in social regulatory programs. Methods. We test our hypothesis using a panel tobit analysis of data from …
Institutional Foundations of the President's Issue Agenda
Revue des revues
Distribution lectronique Cairn.info pour Presses de Sciences Po. Distribution lectronique Cairn.info pour Presses de Sciences Po. La reproduction ou reprsentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorise que dans les limites des conditions gnrales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas chant, des conditions gnrales de la licence souscrite par votre tablissement. Toute autre reproduction ou reprsentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque …
Agenda Setting, Issue Priorities and Organizational Maintenance: The US Supreme Court, 1955 to 1994
In recent decades, political science has turned to the study of agenda setting as a central aspect of collective decision-making environments. The content of the public agenda – and the issue agendas of political institutions – make significant social change possible. Recent studies suggest that these political institutions are engaged in both competitive relationships, as they identify and pursue both active and latent public issues, and more co…
Politics and State Punitiveness in Black and White
Recent findings from the literature on imprisonment policy suggest that in addition to traditional social and economic variables, imprisonment rates are also strongly related to changes in the state political environment. In this study, we extend this literature by testing a theory of state punitiveness which posits that (1) the political environment of states influences the degree to which they incarcerate their citizens, and (2) the political d…
Institutional Foundations of the President’s Issue Agenda
In this study, we focus on an unresolved problem in our understanding of the construction of the presidential issue agenda: how to reconcile the president’s responsiveness to public opinion with his institutionalized electoral cycle. We argue that the president’s responsiveness is contingent: that the president allocates agenda space to discretionary issues when the strength of public opinion is high and the electoral cycle dictates responsivenes…
Policy Signals and Executive Governance: Presidential Rhetoric in the War on Drugs
One consequence of the president's use of rhetoric to shape the public agenda, the media, and congressional attention is less recognized: Presidential rhetoric shapes the priorities of the administrative agents over whom he seeks managerial control. We present statistical tests of the managerial power of presidential policy signals in the case of the United States Attorneys' implementation of the federal "War on Drugs." We find that presidential …
The Politics of Torts: Explaining Litigation Rates in the American States
Debate rages over whether Americans have become enormously litigious, but little research considers why Americans file cases in the first place or adequately considers rates of litigation over time. This article examines tort filings in ten representative states over a 20-year period and analyzes the impact of social, political, policy, and legal system factors that may account for case filings. We find that filing rates vary substantially over t…
Presidential Bureaucratic Power and Supreme Court Justice Voting
Presidential Power and the United States Supreme Court
In this study, we build upon the work of Ducat and Dudley's 1989 examination of presidential power and the federal judiciary. Whereas they focused upon presidential fortunes before the federal district courts in cases involving the formal constitutional and statutory powers of the president, we apply a similar model to the voting records of United States Supreme Court Justices in such presidential power cases. Additionally, we offer an extended m…
Politics and State Punitiveness in Black and White
Recent findings from the literature on imprisonment policy suggest that in addition to traditional social and economic variables, imprisonment rates are also strongly related to changes in the state political environment. In this study, we extend this literature by testing a theory of state punitiveness which posits that (1) the political environment of states influences the degree to which they incarcerate their citizens, and (2) the political d…
Policy Signals and Executive Governance: Presidential Rhetoric in the War on Drugs
One consequence of the president's use of rhetoric to shape the public agenda, the media, and congressional attention is less recognized: Presidential rhetoric shapes the priorities of the administrative agents over whom he seeks managerial control. We present statistical tests of the managerial power of presidential policy signals in the case of the United States Attorneys' implementation of the federal "War on Drugs." We find that presidential …
Presidential Power and the United States Supreme Court
In this study, we build upon the work of Ducat and Dudley's 1989 examination of presidential power and the federal judiciary. Whereas they focused upon presidential fortunes before the federal district courts in cases involving the formal constitutional and statutory powers of the president, we apply a similar model to the voting records of United States Supreme Court Justices in such presidential power cases. Additionally, we offer an extended m…
Homegrown Institutional Legitimacy: Assessing Citizens' Diffuse Support for State Courts
Since the United States Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, the public's support for the judicial system looms as an especially important concern. Although studies have confirmed that the Supreme Court's reservoir of public goodwill has remained largely intact following the politically divisive decision, the status of public support for other American courts has received little attention. This reflects a broader trend in judicial politics s…
Do Policy Messengers Matter? Majority Opinion Writers as Policy Cues in Public Agreement with Supreme Court Decisions
Does the identity of a majority opinion writer affect the level of agreement a Supreme Court decision receives from the public? Using a survey experiment, we manipulate majority opinion authors to investigate whether individuals are willing to agree with Supreme Court opinions authored by ideologically similar justices even though the decisions cut against their self-identified ideological policy preferences. Our study provides insight into the e…
Judges, Litigants, and the Design of Courts
Two important perspectives on courts highlight fundamentally different elements of adjudication and yield distinct predictions about judicial outcomes. The Attitudinal Model of judicial voting posits judge ideology as a strong predictor of court outcomes. Alternatively, the Law and Economics perspective focuses on the settlement behavior of litigants and reasons that while judges may vote ideologically, litigants adapt to these ideological procli…
Institutional Foundations of the President’s Issue Agenda
In this study, we focus on an unresolved problem in our understanding of the construction of the presidential issue agenda: how to reconcile the president’s responsiveness to public opinion with his institutionalized electoral cycle. We argue that the president’s responsiveness is contingent: that the president allocates agenda space to discretionary issues when the strength of public opinion is high and the electoral cycle dictates responsivenes…
The Adoption of Robotics by Government Agencies: Evidence from Crime Labs
Naming Names: The Impact of Supreme Court Opinion Attribution on Citizen Assessment of Policy Outcomes
The manner in which political institutions convey their policy outcomes can have important implications for how the public views institutions' policy decisions. This paper explores whether the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court communicates its policy decrees affects how favorably members of the public assess its decisions. Specifically, we investigate whether attributing a decision to the nation's High Court or to an individual justice influenc…
Assessing the Impact of State Judicial Structures on Citizen Litigiousness
Some researchers argue over the existence of a “litigation explosion,” while others seek to understand the causes of variation in citizen legal mobilization and rates of litigation among states. Existing studies have provided important insight into citizens’ propensity to invoke the state courts to settle disputes; however, there remain unresolved questions concerning state litigation rates. The authors argue that the structural aspects of state …
Agenda Setting, Issue Priorities and Organizational Maintenance: The US Supreme Court, 1955 to 1994
In recent decades, political science has turned to the study of agenda setting as a central aspect of collective decision-making environments. The content of the public agenda – and the issue agendas of political institutions – make significant social change possible. Recent studies suggest that these political institutions are engaged in both competitive relationships, as they identify and pursue both active and latent public issues, and more co…
Ideological Extremism and Public Participation
Objectives. Does aggregate ideological extremism reduce public participation? Does participation in governance processes fall when the social environment shifts to the extreme left or the extreme right of the political spectrum? Our main hypothesis is that the aggregate ideological orientation of the social environment constrains volunteerism in social regulatory programs. Methods. We test our hypothesis using a panel tobit analysis of data from …
The Politics of Torts: Explaining Litigation Rates in the American States
Debate rages over whether Americans have become enormously litigious, but little research considers why Americans file cases in the first place or adequately considers rates of litigation over time. This article examines tort filings in ten representative states over a 20-year period and analyzes the impact of social, political, policy, and legal system factors that may account for case filings. We find that filing rates vary substantially over t…
Presidential Bureaucratic Power and Supreme Court Justice Voting
The Increasing Nationalization of Local Elections: The Case of Prosecutors
To what extent are local races across the country being increasingly driven by politics at the national level? In this article, we examine the nationalization of elections for state executive branches' primary front line legal actors in the criminal courts—local prosecutors. We seek to better understand the factors influencing prosecutor election outcomes and why these types of elections have become more nationalized in recent years. More specifi…
Evaluating diffuse support for state high courts among individuals with varying levels of policy agreement
Background Courts are unusually vulnerable governing institutions that rely upon deeply seated public support and notions of institutional legitimacy to flourish and remain policy‐relevant. This diffuse support allows courts to be viable policy entities while simultaneously issuing edicts that are counter‐majoritarian. A recent debate centers on whether policy disagreement affects members of the public's diffuse support stores for the nation's Hi…
Presidential Power and the United States Supreme Court
In this study, we build upon the work of Ducat and Dudley's 1989 examination of presidential power and the federal judiciary. Whereas they focused upon presidential fortunes before the federal district courts in cases involving the formal constitutional and statutory powers of the president, we apply a similar model to the voting records of United States Supreme Court Justices in such presidential power cases. Additionally, we offer an extended m…
Presidential Bureaucratic Power and Supreme Court Justice Voting
The Politics of Torts: Explaining Litigation Rates in the American States
Debate rages over whether Americans have become enormously litigious, but little research considers why Americans file cases in the first place or adequately considers rates of litigation over time. This article examines tort filings in ten representative states over a 20-year period and analyzes the impact of social, political, policy, and legal system factors that may account for case filings. We find that filing rates vary substantially over t…
Policy Signals and Executive Governance: Presidential Rhetoric in the War on Drugs
One consequence of the president's use of rhetoric to shape the public agenda, the media, and congressional attention is less recognized: Presidential rhetoric shapes the priorities of the administrative agents over whom he seeks managerial control. We present statistical tests of the managerial power of presidential policy signals in the case of the United States Attorneys' implementation of the federal "War on Drugs." We find that presidential …
Institutional Foundations of the President's Issue Agenda
Revue des revues
Distribution lectronique Cairn.info pour Presses de Sciences Po. Distribution lectronique Cairn.info pour Presses de Sciences Po. La reproduction ou reprsentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorise que dans les limites des conditions gnrales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas chant, des conditions gnrales de la licence souscrite par votre tablissement. Toute autre reproduction ou reprsentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque …
Agenda Setting, Issue Priorities and Organizational Maintenance: The US Supreme Court, 1955 to 1994
In recent decades, political science has turned to the study of agenda setting as a central aspect of collective decision-making environments. The content of the public agenda – and the issue agendas of political institutions – make significant social change possible. Recent studies suggest that these political institutions are engaged in both competitive relationships, as they identify and pursue both active and latent public issues, and more co…
Politics and State Punitiveness in Black and White
Recent findings from the literature on imprisonment policy suggest that in addition to traditional social and economic variables, imprisonment rates are also strongly related to changes in the state political environment. In this study, we extend this literature by testing a theory of state punitiveness which posits that (1) the political environment of states influences the degree to which they incarcerate their citizens, and (2) the political d…
Institutional Foundations of the President’s Issue Agenda
In this study, we focus on an unresolved problem in our understanding of the construction of the presidential issue agenda: how to reconcile the president’s responsiveness to public opinion with his institutionalized electoral cycle. We argue that the president’s responsiveness is contingent: that the president allocates agenda space to discretionary issues when the strength of public opinion is high and the electoral cycle dictates responsivenes…
Ideological Extremism and Public Participation
Objectives. Does aggregate ideological extremism reduce public participation? Does participation in governance processes fall when the social environment shifts to the extreme left or the extreme right of the political spectrum? Our main hypothesis is that the aggregate ideological orientation of the social environment constrains volunteerism in social regulatory programs. Methods. We test our hypothesis using a panel tobit analysis of data from …
Homegrown Institutional Legitimacy: Assessing Citizens' Diffuse Support for State Courts
Since the United States Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, the public's support for the judicial system looms as an especially important concern. Although studies have confirmed that the Supreme Court's reservoir of public goodwill has remained largely intact following the politically divisive decision, the status of public support for other American courts has received little attention. This reflects a broader trend in judicial politics s…
Assessing the Impact of State Judicial Structures on Citizen Litigiousness
Some researchers argue over the existence of a “litigation explosion,” while others seek to understand the causes of variation in citizen legal mobilization and rates of litigation among states. Existing studies have provided important insight into citizens’ propensity to invoke the state courts to settle disputes; however, there remain unresolved questions concerning state litigation rates. The authors argue that the structural aspects of state …
Judges, Litigants, and the Design of Courts
Two important perspectives on courts highlight fundamentally different elements of adjudication and yield distinct predictions about judicial outcomes. The Attitudinal Model of judicial voting posits judge ideology as a strong predictor of court outcomes. Alternatively, the Law and Economics perspective focuses on the settlement behavior of litigants and reasons that while judges may vote ideologically, litigants adapt to these ideological procli…
Do Policy Messengers Matter? Majority Opinion Writers as Policy Cues in Public Agreement with Supreme Court Decisions
Does the identity of a majority opinion writer affect the level of agreement a Supreme Court decision receives from the public? Using a survey experiment, we manipulate majority opinion authors to investigate whether individuals are willing to agree with Supreme Court opinions authored by ideologically similar justices even though the decisions cut against their self-identified ideological policy preferences. Our study provides insight into the e…
Perceptions of the Rule of Law: Evidence on the Impact of Judicial Insulation
Objectives The purpose of this article is to determine whether judicial insulation influences how individuals assess the rule of law. Methods We employ panel data models using data collected by the World Bank and other sources to differentiate the influence of two kinds of judicial insulation—designed (de jure) and implemented (de facto)—on individuals’ perceptions of the viability of the rule of law in their country. Results We find that while i…
Naming Names: The Impact of Supreme Court Opinion Attribution on Citizen Assessment of Policy Outcomes
The manner in which political institutions convey their policy outcomes can have important implications for how the public views institutions' policy decisions. This paper explores whether the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court communicates its policy decrees affects how favorably members of the public assess its decisions. Specifically, we investigate whether attributing a decision to the nation's High Court or to an individual justice influenc…
The Adoption of Robotics by Government Agencies: Evidence from Crime Labs
Evaluating diffuse support for state high courts among individuals with varying levels of policy agreement
Background Courts are unusually vulnerable governing institutions that rely upon deeply seated public support and notions of institutional legitimacy to flourish and remain policy‐relevant. This diffuse support allows courts to be viable policy entities while simultaneously issuing edicts that are counter‐majoritarian. A recent debate centers on whether policy disagreement affects members of the public's diffuse support stores for the nation's Hi…
Surveillance as the Past and Future of Public Administration
We trace how privacy-encroaching technologies have unfolded over the course of human history and how such technologies have influenced human societies and economies; governments have been central to this evolution. We maintain that surveillance is inevitable: that the future of public administration will depend on how administrators and others navigate deep rifts in public fear (yet acceptance) of surveillance and other means of data collection. …
The Increasing Nationalization of Local Elections: The Case of Prosecutors
To what extent are local races across the country being increasingly driven by politics at the national level? In this article, we examine the nationalization of elections for state executive branches' primary front line legal actors in the criminal courts—local prosecutors. We seek to better understand the factors influencing prosecutor election outcomes and why these types of elections have become more nationalized in recent years. More specifi…
The People’s Attorney? Examining Public Trust in the Prosecutor’s Office
Prosecutors play a pivotal role in the American criminal justice system, exercising broad discretion over charging, plea bargaining, and sentencing recommendations. Yet despite their significant influence, we know surprisingly little about how the public perceives prosecutors – or the conditions under which trust in them is earned or lost. Building on research on political trust and leveraging new, granular survey evidence, we argue that public c…
Breaking Barriers: Analyzing Women Prosecutors’ Electoral Success
Although state prosecutors play a critically important role in the U.S. criminal justice system, these elections have received limited scholarly attention. Prosecutor elections historically have been dominated by men but have seen growing numbers of women candidates. Using data from elections between 2012 and 2020 in the 200 most populous prosecutorial districts, we assess the likelihood of a woman candidate running for the office and her chances…
Political science (19 works) · Politics (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Judicial and Constitutional Studies (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Legal and Constitutional Studies (9 works) · Public Administration (9 works) · Public Administration (8 works) · Economics (7 works)