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What protocol should participants in a collective decision making institution follow? Analysts often implicitly assume that each participant should decide as if she were deciding alone. This essay argues that, in many institutional contexts, the normatively appropriate protocol for deciding together differs from the protocol of deciding alone. The argument is developed through the analysis of two prominent collective decision institutions: the jury and the appellate court.

Analyses of complex entities such as bureaucracies, courts, legislatures, and firms typically personify them. A strong conception of personification requires that these entities have rational interests, rational (factual) beliefs, and rational normative judgments. On one account of personification, such personified rationality should be aggregate rationality: the interests, beliefs, and normative judgments should depend only on the interests, beliefs, and judgments of the individuals who constitute the complex entity. I argue that aggregate rationality is too strong a normative requirement to impose on courts and legislatures.

"Theorizing the U.S. Supreme Court" published on by Oxford University Press.