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Griffin on Peer Precedent and the Federal Appellate Courts
Amy J. Griffin (Georgetown University Law Center) has posted Peer Precedent: How Sister Circuits Shape Federal Appellate Decision-Making on SSRN. Here is the abstract: When federal appellate courts face issues of first impression, they attribute great weight to sister circuit precedent, even though they don’t have to. This Article provides the first full empirical and theoretical account of how and why courts use sister circuit decisions—peer precedent—in the absence of binding authority.