“Statutory Interpretation and Chevron Deference in the Appellate Courts: An Empirical Analysis,” UC Irvine Law Review (2022)
This Article continues the analysis coding for the statutory methods used by the appellate courts in National Labor Relations Board decisions. It analyzes how appellate courts employ Chevron deference as well as how choice of statutory method varies according to the type of deference applied. In addition, the Article examines how judge demographic factors impact choice of statutory method and deference regime.
“Overqualified and Underrepresented: Gender Inequality in the Pharmaceutical Patent Field (with Sean Tu and Paul Gugliuzza)
“Presidential Ideology and Immigration Detention,” with Catherine Kim, Duke Law Journal (2020 symposium) (May 2020)
Kim & Semet Presidential Ideology and Immigrant Detention
This article analyzes over 850,000 outcomes in bond decisions in the immigration courts between January 2001 and September 2019. Its bivariate analyses based on cross-tabulations, without additional controls, show that noncitizens have fared worse in bond proceedings during the Trump administration than they did during the prior two presidential administrations. The analysis also finds that all immigration judges—regardless of the president whose Attorney General appointed them—have been more likely to deny bond or impose a higher bond amount during the Donald Trump Era than during the Barack Obama or George W. Bush Eras.
“An Empirical Analysis of Politicization in Immigration Adjudications,” with Catherine Kim, Georgetown Law Journal, 108:3 (Feb. 2020)
Kim & Semet An Empirical Study of Political Control over Immigration Adjudication
Using an original dataset of over 550,000 removal proceedings decided between January 2001 and June 2019, this Article finds that the Administration in control at the time of decision is a statistically significant predictor of removal rates. The Article also finds that removal rates do not differ depending on the President whose Attorney General appointed the IJ. The study controls for a host of noncitizen, judges demographic, political, economic, geographic, and institutional variables.
“An Empirical Examination of Agency Statutory Interpretation” Minnesota Law Review, 103:5 (2019)
Surveying over 7,000 cases heard by the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) from 1993-2016, I analyze the statutory methodologies the Board uses in its decisions in order to uncover patterns of how the Board interprets statutes over time. I find that there is little ideological coherence to statutory method and that the methods used have changed over time.
“Specialized Courts and District Court Decision Making in Patent Law,” Boston College Law Review 60:2 (2019)
Semet Specialized Trial Courts
In this Article, I analyze over 30,000 trial-court patent cases, focusing specifically on whether cases heard by district court judges participating in the patent law pilot program differ from thee cases before non-pilot judges. Pilot judges have more experience reviewing patent cases. I then analyze how pilot and non-pilot judges differ in terms of the outcome on appeal. After controlling for case-specific and judge demographic factors, I conclude that pilot judges do not appear to have appreciably different reversal rates on appeal than non-pilot judges.
“How Do Low Salience Decisions Affect Judicial Elections?” with Brandice Canes-Wrone and Thomas Clark (forthcoming in Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Volume 15:4, December 2018)
We collect an original dataset of over 5000 judicial votes on nearly 1,000 cases heard in 40 state supreme courts from 1990-2014 to asses the impact that public opinion and attack ads have in influencing voting before state supreme courts in environmental law cases.
“Political Decision Making at the National Labor Relations Board: An Empirical Examination of the Board’s Decisions Through the Clinton and Bush Years,” Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 37:2 (Spring 2016)
Semet Berkeley Journal of Employment & Labor Law
Employing an original dataset of almost 3,000 NLRB decisions from the Clinton and Bush years (1993-2007), this article presents one of the few recent studies of voting patterns at the NLRB on unfair labor practice disputes.
“Bush v. Gore in the American Mind: Reflections and Survey Results on the Tenth Anniversary of the Decision Sending the 2000 Election Controversy” (with Nathaniel Persily and Stephen Ansolabehere), published in Election Reform in the United States After Bush v. Gore, edited by R. Michael Alvarez and Bernard Grofman (Cambridge University Press 2014)
This book chapter of a peer reviewed book from Cambridge University Press examines public opinion on the Bush v. Gore case ten years later, finding that both the respondent’s race as well as their feelings toward President George Bush motivate their lingering feelings on the Bush v. Gore decision
WORKS IN PROGRESS
“An Empirical Study Comparing Patent Validity Challenges at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board vs. the Federal District Courts”
This Article empirically examines the administrative process of inter partes review to compare outcomes to those obtained before the district court in similar cases. Analyzing over 11,000 decisions between 2012 and 2020, the study matches up decisions in inter partes cases to those in district court to assess the efficacy of using an administrative procedure to decide patent cases.
“An Empirical Examination of Patent Law Decision-Making in the District Courts Over Twenty Years”
Using an original database of over 72,000 cases heard by the district courts from 2000-2020, this Article analyzes what factors influence the district court’s decision to find infringement or invalidity in patent law cases.
“How Do Patent Law Administrative Adjudicators Make Decisions?”
This Article focus on how panels of administrative patent law adjudicators make decisions in inter partes review cases from 2012 to the present. Using a unique dataset of demographic features of patent law adjudicators, it examines how the patent law judge’s scientific expertise and employment background affect outcomes in inter partes cases.
“An Empirical Examination of Copyright Law Decision-Making in the District Courts Over Ten Years”
Using an original database of over 48,000 cases heard by the district courts from 2009-2020, this Article analyzes what factors influence the district court’s decision’s in copyright law cases. It also analyzes the regional distraction of copyright cases.
“An Empirical Examination of Trademark Law Decision-Making in the District Courts Over Ten Years”
Using an original database of over 56,000 cases heard by the district courts from 2009-2020, this Article analyzes what factors influence the district court’s decision’s in trademark law cases. It also analyzes the regional distraction of trademark cases.
“Using Machine Learning to Assess Clarity in Federal Circuit Decisions”
In this Article, I use natural language processing to analyze the text of all Federal Circuit decisions on patent law to devise a supervised learning model to predict how panels of Federal Circuit judges make decisions.
Administrative Adjudication: A Study of the Adjudicatory Process Across the Administrative State
This book project analyzes the impact that politicalization has on administrative adjudication in several different agencies: the National Labor Relations Board, the Patent and Trademark Office, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Board of Immigration Appeals.
“An Empirical Review of Immigration Detention”
This study expands on the Duke Law Journal analysis by examining what factors impact how immigration judges make bond decisions. It controls for the noncitizen, judge demographic, political, economic, geographic and institutional variables the can predict how judges make decisions on bond cases during the past twenty years.
“An Empirical Examination of Immigration Judge Decision Making over Fifty Years”
This study analyzes over 9.6 million individual proceedings in the immigration courts between 1951 and 2020 to assess how decision-making in immigration courts has changed over time. In particular, it focuses on descriptive patterns in the data in how immigration cases are adjudicated.
“Presidential Ideology and Board of Immigration Appeals Decisions”
This Article analyzes how presidential ideology impacts decision-making at the Board of Immigration Appeals. While the study I did with Catherine Kim focused on the immigration courts, this Article shifts the focus to the BIA and examines statistically the noncitizen, judge demographic, political, economic, geographic, and institutional variables that impact how the BIA makes decisions.
“Public Opinion and Immigration Court Decisions”
This Article focuses on the impact that shifts in public opinion have in impacting how immigration judges make decisions on both removal and asylum during the past thirty years. Using MRP analysis to assess state-level public opinion and controlling for the myriad of noncitizen, judge demographic, political, economic, geographic, and institutional variables that might affect decisions, this analysis tries to examine specifically how public opinion influences bureaucratic decision-making.
“Predicting Deference in Appellate Court Cases”
Using an original database of over 1,300 appellate court cases, I analyze the factors that impact how NLRB cases are reviewed on appeal.
Campaign Contributions, Judicial Elections and State Supreme Court Decisions (with Brandice Canes-Wrone and Tom Clark)
In this paper, we look at the impact that campaign contributions have in influencing judicial votes in environmental and abortion law cases from 1990 to the present.
“District Court Compliance with Appellate Court Rulings”
I apply text analysis to analyze how opinion clarity impacts the choice of the appellate court to defer to the lower court.
