Vote Timing Affects Judicial Dissent: Evidence from Chile, Colombia, Spain, and the US

In this article, we assess how the timing of judicial votes—specifically, whether votes are cast before or after a draft judgment is circulated— affects the probability of dissenting among high court judges. Drawing on data from Chile, Colombia, Spain, and the US, we propose and test a "vote timing hypothesis." This hypothesis holds that pre-draft voting boosts dissent rates relative to post-draft voting. Using a Most Different Systems Design and multilevel logistic regressions on over 22,000 judge-level votes, we find strong evidence that courts using pre-draft voting show significantly higher dissent rates, even after accounting for judicial, institutional, and contextual factors. Our findings highlight the relevance of decision procedures in shaping judicial behavior and have implications for designing and reforming high courts globally.