The Structure of American Legal Institutions and the Diffusion of Wrongful-Discharge Laws, 1978-1999

This article evaluates how the social structure of American legal institutions influenced the diffusion of wrongful-discharge laws over the period 1978-1999, and it assesses whether economic or political variables influenced the diffusion process. The results are surprising and quite striking. Precedents by other courts within the same federal circuit region were generally more influential in the diffusion process than precedents by courts in neighboring states or by courts within the same census or West legal reporting region, even though the precedents were on matters of state law rather than federal law and the decisions were usually made by state courts rather than federal courts. There is some limited evidence that political variables may also have been a factor, but economic variables were not statistically significant, even though the new employment laws may have had important economic consequences.