This article integrates insights from different veins of historical institutionalism to offer an analytical framework that specifies how ideas, institutions, and actors account for key aspects of judicial decision-making, including change over time. To the extent that ideas are widely distributed, highly salient, and stable among actors in the judicial field, they can affect patterns of rulings in a particular issue area. The distribution, salience, and stability of norms, however, may change over time for reasons embedded in the institutional structures themselves. Existing policies, laws, or treaties create the potential for new actors to enter the judicial field through processes that theorists of institutional change have identified as intercurrence, displacement, conversion, layering, and drift. New actors can shift the relative salience of ideas already rooted in the judicial field. This ideational salience amplification can alter patterns of judicial decision-making without the fundamental and often costly battles involved in wholesale paradigm change. French high court hate speech decisions provide the context for the development of this framework and serve to illustrate the dynamic. The author uses evidence from an original dataset of every ruling by the French Court of Cassation regarding racist hate speech from 1972 through 2012 to explain the varying propensity of the high court to restrict speech that targets majorities compared to minorities.

中文翻译：

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历史制度主义与司法决策

本文整合了来自不同历史制度主义脉络的见解，以提供一个分析框架，说明思想、制度和行为者如何解释司法决策的关键方面，包括随时间的变化。如果思想在司法领域的行为者中广泛分布、高度突出和稳定，它们可以影响特定问题领域的裁决模式。然而，由于制度结构本身的原因，规范的分布、显着性和稳定性可能会随着时间而改变。现有的政策、法律或条约为新的行为者通过制度变革理论家认定为交互、置换、转换、分层和漂移的过程进入司法领域创造了潜力。新的参与者可以改变已经植根于司法领域的思想的相对重要性。这种观念上的显着性放大可以改变司法决策的模式，而无需进行大规模范式改变所涉及的基本且通常代价高昂的战斗。法国高等法院仇恨言论判决为该框架的发展提供了背景，并有助于说明动态。作者使用来自法国最高法院从 1972 年到 2012 年关于种族主义仇恨言论的每项裁决的原始数据集的证据来解释高等法院与少数群体相比限制针对多数人的言论的不同倾向。这种观念上的显着性放大可以改变司法决策的模式，而无需进行大规模范式改变所涉及的基本且通常代价高昂的战斗。法国高等法院仇恨言论判决为该框架的发展提供了背景，并有助于说明动态。作者使用来自法国最高法院从 1972 年到 2012 年关于种族主义仇恨言论的每项裁决的原始数据集的证据来解释高等法院与少数群体相比限制针对多数人的言论的不同倾向。这种观念上的显着性放大可以改变司法决策的模式，而无需进行大规模范式改变所涉及的基本且通常代价高昂的战斗。法国高等法院仇恨言论判决为该框架的发展提供了背景，并有助于说明动态。作者使用来自法国最高法院从 1972 年到 2012 年关于种族主义仇恨言论的每项裁决的原始数据集的证据来解释高等法院与少数群体相比限制针对多数人的言论的不同倾向。