How do federal court rulings influence state policy borrowing? New findings from text analysis

💡 Data & Methods: Employed computational text analysis to model how states borrow directly from one another's laws, focusing on the impact of federal appellate court decisions.

📏 Key Findings: Court rulings significantly affect both policy adoption and text borrowing. Rulings finding statutes unconstitutional can reduce state adoption probability by up to 28%, while affirmations increase it similarly and encourage states to borrow more than double their preexisting law's text.

🛠 Why It Matters: This research illuminates the concrete mechanisms through which federal courts shape state policy diffusion, moving beyond abstract notions of influence.