Brian Flanagan (National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUI Maynooth) – Faculty of Law), Njogu Mbau (Strathmore Business School, Strathmore University), Daniel Chen (University of Toulouse Capitole – Toulouse School of Economics), & Kenneth Silver (Trinity College Dublin – Trinity Business School) has posted What Precedent Reveals About Group Agency: Evidence from Discursive Dilemmas on the U.S. Supreme Court on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Do judgment-aggregation paradoxes prompt social scientists to posit irreducible “group agents”? We test this claim using the U.S. Supreme Court’s experience with discursive dilemmas. In cases that exhibit a dilemma, we compare subsequent courts’ treatment of (i) the majority holding and (ii) its non-majority premises (plurality-only or concurrence-only holdings). Using citation stance analysis and paired nonparametric tests across 14 cases, we find that downstream courts systematically privilege the majority-supported holdings and discount their minority-only premises. These results suggest that legal precedent tracks majoritarian reducibility, not irreducible group rationality. We conclude that discursive dilemmas speak primarily to institutional design—the choice of aggregation rules—rather than to social ontology.
Very interesting and highly recommended.