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Article Reviews Authorship of Opinions By Federal Judges

Choi, Stephen J. and Gulati, Gaurang Mitu, “Which Judges Write Their Opinions (and Should We Care)?” (May 2005). NYU Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 05-04; NYU, Law and Economics Research Paper No. 05-06; Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 715062. [Link]

  • Abstract: “Common wisdom holds that many federal judges do not write their own opinions. While their degree of input into opinion writing varies, almost all rely to some extent on law clerks, typically recent law school graduates, to research and draft substantial sections of the opinion. Why should we care which judges write their opinions? We posit that determining the actual input of federal judges into the authorship of opinions provides useful information in a number of contexts, including judicial promotion decisions, the allocation of scarce judicial resources, and the judicial clerkship market for law students.”
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