Premium
Federal District Court Decision Making in Public Forum and Religious Speech Cases, 1973–2001
Author(s) -
Blakeman John C.,
Greco Donald E.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
journal for the scientific study of religion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1468-5906
pISSN - 0021-8294
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5906.2004.00246.x
Subject(s) - adjudication , law , doctrine , political science , first amendment , speech act , freedom of expression , establishment clause , order (exchange) , free speech , court decision , supreme court , business , human rights , linguistics , philosophy , finance
This article investigates federal district court decision making in First Amendment lawsuits concerning religious expression and public forums. As trial courts, district courts are the first to adjudicate claims concerning religious speech in public places and thus they determine whether a public forum is open to expression in general, as well as grant or deny access to that forum for a religious speaker. With a comprehensive database of all district court cases concerning religious expression and public forum doctrine, we use logistic regression to measure the significance of several legal and extra‐legal variables in order to explain district court outcomes.