Showing papers by "Donald R. Songer published in 1996"

Not the whole story: The impact of justices' values on supreme court decision making

Abstract: A half century of empirical scholarship has now firmly established that the ideological values and the policy preferences of Supreme Court justices have a profound impact on their decisions in many cases. The prior work of Segal and Spaeth (both collaborative and independent) has made important contributions to our understanding of the linkages between these preferences and the justices' decisions (Rohde and Spaeth 1976; Segal 1984; Segal and Cover 1989; Segal and Spaeth 1993). Their most recent work (Segal and Spaeth 1996) provides additional evidence that for the set of important policy making cases they examine, the policy preferences of the justices have a significant effect on judicial votes. While this research makes it clear that preferences play an important role in the justices' decision making process, it does not establish that preferences eclipse precedent and legal doctrine completely. Segal and Spaeth (1996) argue that there has been no systematic empirical evidence of the role of legal factors, including precedent, at the Supreme Court level. Several studies, nevertheless, have provided bits of evidence that, when considered together, suggest that legal factors do matter. For example, Epstein and Koblyka's 1992 study of death penalty and abortion decisions indicates that the substantive legal arguments presented to the Court play an important role in doctrinal development and alteration. Similarly, H.W. Perry's 1991 study of the Court's agenda-setting process, which demonstrated the justices' concern for the jurisprudential, as well as the policy implications of cases selected for review, further reinforces the view that law and precedent matter in the Supreme Court. Although Perry did not investigate decisions on the merits, justices who place cases on the docket for jurisprudential reasons should be attentive to those same jurisprudential concerns at the merits stage. These studies may not provide a systematic assessment of precedent and the justices' decisions. But they do suggest that it matters. Regardless of this evidence in support of the legal model, Segal and Spaeth continue to adhere to their position that precedent has virtually no impact on the