Showing papers on "Majority opinion published in 2007"

Network Analysis and the Law: Measuring the Legal Importance of Precedents at the U.S. Supreme Court

Abstract: We construct the complete network of 26,681 majority opinions written by the U.S. Supreme Court and the cases that cite them from 1791 to 2005. We describe a method for using the patterns in citations within and across cases to create importance scores that identify the most legally relevant precedents in the network of Supreme Court law at any given point in time. Our measures are superior to existing network-based alternatives and, for example, offer information regarding case importance not evident in simple citation counts. We also demonstrate the validity of our measures by showing that they are strongly correlated with the future citation behavior of state courts, the U.S. Courts of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. In so doing, we show that network analysis is a viable way of measuring how central a case is to law at the Court and suggest that it can be used to measure other legal concepts.

The Authority of Supreme Court Precedent

Abstract: We construct the complete network of 30,288 majority opinions written by the U.S. Supreme Court and the cases they cite from 1754 to 2002 in the United States Reports. Data from this network demonstrates quantitatively the evolution of the norm of stare decisis in the 19th Century and a significant deviation from this norm by the activist Warren court. We further describe a method for creating authority scores using the network data to identify the most important Court precedents. This method yields rankings that conform closely to evaluations by legal experts, and even predicts which cases they will identify as important in the future. An analysis of these scores over time allows us to test several hypotheses about the rise and fall of precedent. We show that reversed cases tend to be much more important than other decisions, and the cases that overrule them quickly become and remain even more important as the reversed decisions decline. We also show that the Court is careful to ground overruling decisions in past precedent, and the care it exercises is increasing in the importance of the decision that is overruled. Finally, authority scores corroborate qualitative assessments of which issues and cases the Court prioritizes and how these change over time.

Decision making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Abstract: Contents Illustrations 00 Prologue 00 1. Political Ideology and Circuit Court Decision Making 00 2. The Law and Circuit Court Decision Making 00 3. Judicial Background and Circuit Court Decision Making 00 4. Other Institutions and Circuit Court Decision Making 00 5. Litigants and Circuit Court Decision Making 00 6. Panel Effects and Circuit Court Decision Making 00 7. Procedural Threshold Effects and Circuit Court Decision Making 00 8. Circuit Court Decision Making and Precedential Impact 00 Epilogue 00 Notes 00 Index 00

Congress, the Supreme Court, and Judicial Review: Testing a Constitutional Separation of Powers Model

Abstract: Scholars dispute whether the Supreme Court is constrained by the threat of Congressional override of its decisions. In the context of judicial review of the constititutionality of federal legislation, tensions between the two branches are arguably at their peak. In this paper, therefore, we test two tracks to Congressional inference: the rational anticipation of the separation of powers model and a more boundedly rational institutional maintenance model. We do this by estimating the preferences of the current Court's and the current Congress over the challenged legislation to determine whether the Court rationally anticipates being overturned in the instant case and proactively capitulates. We test the institutional maintenance model by examining factors that do not require the Court to know whether any particular case will be overturned, but nevertheless might cue the Court that it is acting in a hostile environment, and thus should be wary. In this initial analysis of our data, we find that the Court does not appear to be constrained by expectations of Congressional override. On the other hand, the Court is substantially less likely to strike legislation when it is ideologically distant from the House and Senate, as Congress could then act institutionally against the judiciary.

Panel Composition and Judicial Compliance on the US Courts of Appeals

Abstract: This article integrates the literatures on judicial compliance, panel decision making, and case selection in the federal judiciary hierarchy. Many studies have speculated that ‘‘panel effects’’—the phenomena under which an individual judge’s vote may depend on her colleagues on a three-judge panel—can be tied to a ‘‘whistleblower effect,’’ through which a lower court judge can constrain a panel majority from disobeying with Supreme Court precedent by threatening to dissent. However, no study has systematically found such a relationship. I present a game-theoretic model of circuit court-Supreme Court interaction that demonstrates how panel composition might affect the likelihood of lower court compliance to Supreme Court doctrine. The model illustrates how three-judge panels, while not inducing perfect doctrinal control of lower courts by the Supreme Court, significantly increases the latter’s ability to see its preferred doctrine carried out by its subordinates in the judicial hierarchy.

Agenda Control, the Median Justice, and the Majority Opinion on the U.S. Supreme Court

Abstract: Some scholars argue that the author of the majority opinion exercises the most influence over the Court's opinion-writing process, and so can determine what becomes Court policy, at least within the limits of what some Court majority finds acceptable. Other students of the Court have suggested that the Court's median justice effectively dictates the content of the majority opinion: whatever policy the median justice most wants, she can get. We test these competing models with data on Supreme Court decision-making during the Burger Court (1969-1986). While we find substantial evidence for both models, the agenda control model gains greater support. This suggests that opinions on the Court on each case are driven, in general, by the interaction of three key variables: the policy preferences of the majority opinion author, the policy preferences of the median justice, and the location of the legal status quo.

Answering the Call of the Court: How Justices and Litigants Set the Supreme Court Agenda

Abstract: The U.S. Supreme Court is the quintessential example of a court that expanded its agenda into policy areas that were once reserved for legislatures. Yet scholars know very little about what causes attention to various policy areas to ebb and flow on the Supreme Court's agenda. Vanessa A. Baird's "Answering the Call of the Court: How Justices and Litigants Set the Supreme Court Agenda" represents the first scholarly attempt to connect justices' priorities, litigants' strategies, and aggregate policy outputs of the U.S. Supreme Court. Most previous studies on the Supreme Court's agenda examine case selection, but Baird demonstrates that the agenda-setting process begins long before justices choose which cases they will hear. When justices signal their interest in a particular policy area, litigants respond by sponsoring well-crafted cases in those policy areas. Approximately, four to five years later, the Supreme Courtis agenda in those areas expands, with cases that are comparatively more politically important and divisive than other cases the Court hears. From issues of discrimination and free expression to welfare policy, from immigration to economic regulation, strategic supporters of litigation pay attention to the goals of Supreme Court justices and bring cases they can use to achieve those goals. Since policy making in courts is iterative, multiple well-crafted cases are needed for courts to make comprehensive policy. Baird argues that judicial policy-making power depends on the actions of policy entrepreneurs or other litigants who systematically respond to the priorities and preferences of Supreme Court justices.

Agenda Control, the Median Justice, and the Majority Opinion on the U.S. Supreme Court

Abstract: Some scholars argue that the author of the majority opinion exercises the most influence over the Court’s opinion-writing process and so can determine what becomes Court policy, at least within the limits of what some Court majority finds acceptable. Other students of the Court have suggested that the Court’s median justice effectively dictates the content of the majority opinion: whatever policy the median justice most wants, she can get. We test these competing models with data on Supreme Court decision making during the Burger Court (1969‐86). While we find substantial evidence for both models, the agenda control model gains greater support. This suggests that opinions on the Court on each case are driven, in general, by the interaction of three key variables: the policy preferences of the majority opinion author, the policy preferences of the median justice, and the location of the legal status quo. A fter a half century of research on decision making by the Supreme Court, a key question remains unanswered: what policy will be prescribed by the Court’s majority opinion in each case? To understand the development of the majority opinion, and thus of the resulting law, we need to know which justice or justices most influence the Court’s opinions. Answering this question depends upon knowing the relative power of each justice to shape the opinion. The failure by empirically oriented legal scholars to address this question stems from a widespread belief that the justices’ policy preferences alone determine the decisions they make and that a majority of the Court must join an opinion before it has the force of law. As a result, it is argued that decision making is driven simply by the median justice’s policy preferences. This view is reflected

Case Selection and the Study of Judicial Politics

Abstract: One complication in studying the Supreme Court and the judicial hierarchy is that the Court's docket is now nearly completely discretionary. Although the justices' strategies in picking cases affect the observations we can make and the inferences we draw, this is rarely taken into account in studies of judicial politics. In this paper, we study how case selection can affect our inferences within judicial politics, including those about decision making in the Supreme Court itself (such as whether law constrains the justices) and throughout the judicial hierarchy (such as whether lower courts comply with Supreme Court doctrine). We use Fourth Amendment case data to show that the inferential problems raised by the Court's case selection range from moderate to severe. At stake are substantive conclusions within some of the most important and controversial debates in judicial politics.

Party, Policy, or Duty: Why Does the Supreme Court Invalidate Federal Statutes?

Abstract: This paper explores three competing accounts of judicial review by comparing the enacting and invalidating coalitions for each of the fifty-three federal statutes struck down by the Supreme Court during its 1981 through 2005 terms. When a Republican judicial coalition invalidates a Democratic statute, the Court’s decision is consistent with a partisan account, and when a conservative judicial coalition invalidates a liberal statute, the decision is explicable on policy grounds. But when an ideologically mixed coalition invalidates a bipartisan statute, the decision may have reflected an institutional divide between judges and legislators rather than a partisan or policy conflict. Finding more cases consistent with this last explanation than either of the others, I suggest that the existing literature has paid insufficient attention to the possibility of institutionally motivated judicial behavior, and more importantly, that any comprehensive account of the Court’s decisions will have to attend to the interaction of multiple competing influences on the justices.

Issue Preferences and Evaluations of the U.S. Supreme Court

Abstract: While some previous studies have found that public support for the Supreme Court is related to the ideological direction of its decisions, these studies were based on data from the Warren Court era, a period of high profile judicial liberalism. Since then, the Court has grown much more conservative, although its decisions have carried a much lower profile. We show that the mass media have done little to allow ordinary Americans to follow this change. As a consequence, we find that public evaluations in the 1990s continued to reflect a 1960s under- standing of the Court, with liberals on racial and gender issues as well as those least fearful of crime evaluating the Court most favorably. Only those who are both knowledgeable and highly motivated to follow Court outputs tracked its rightward shift on issues that are important to them.

The Migration of Constitutional Ideas: The postwar paradigm and American exceptionalism

Abstract: The Constitution of the United States provided the inspiration for the rights-protecting constitutions of liberal democracies throughout the world. Yet the constitutional systems developed or newly established since the Second World War now differ from their US precursor. These systems have come to share a sophisticated legal paradigm that facilitates - indeed, perhaps necessitates - comparative engagement. The constitutional jurisprudence of the United States stands apart from this shared legal paradigm. Recently, prominent US judges and politicians have crossed swords on the issue of comparative reflection. This debate raises an important question: how should US scholars and judges define the relationship of their Constitution to the constitutional systems of liberal democracies that operate within the postwar constitutional paradigm?In this chapter I focus, in the light of the postwar constitutional conception and its juridical paradigm, on two interrelated strands of the purported justification for the exceptionalist constitutional conception with which it competes. In the first strand, the Constitution stands as the unique product of the US founding, so that constitutional interpretation operates within the parameters of US constitutional tradition and history. Deference to past and present expressions of the people shape legal reasoning about constitutional rights. In the second strand, any deviation from such deference invites subjective and unaccountable judicial preference to reign supreme. The classical exemplar of this danger is the Lochner case. Recoiling from the perceived judicial hubris of Peckham's majority opinion, courts and commentators in the United States have endorsed Holmes's extreme deference to majoritarianism, history, and tradition.The postwar constitutional conception demonstrates the vulnerability of both strands in this argument. The growing development of a transnational culture of rights suggests an alternative to the conception of rights-protection as the unique product of US experience. Moreover, the traditional reading of Lochner is mistaken in asserting, as the sole corrective to Peckham's majority opinion, Holmes's policy of deference to majority, history, and tradition. Rather, we should take up the neglected reasoning of Harlan, who carefully examined the impugned limitation of freedom of contract and found it justified as an exercise of the traditional police power of the state.This chapter develops these themes. The following section traces the emergence and legal structure of the postwar constitutional paradigm. The next section traces the features of this juridical paradigm within the Warren Court. The final section revisits the legitimacy of the Warren Court's constitutional methodology, by arguing that Harlan's dissent - the road not taken, as it were - delineates the legal ordering now acknowledged to be the precursor of the postwar paradigm. The conclusion draws out some of the implications of the overall argument. For example, this reassessment of Harlan's opinion would not merely enrich the recent revisionary examination of the Lochner crisis and its resolution; it would also vindicate as juridical even the most controversial judgments of the Warren Court. If the postwar constitutional paradigm were to be recognized as an integral part of US constitutional legal structure, the door would open to comparative constitutional engagement in the further development of that paradigm within the distinctive contours of US constitutional law.

Revisiting Injunctive Relief: Interpreting eBay in High-Tech Industries with Non-Practicing Patent Holders

Abstract: The Supreme Court's 2006 eBay ruling marked a turning point in injunctive relief policy. Unfortunately, there seems to be considerable confusion about the implications of the decision. Some authors, concerned over patent holdup and excessive royalty rates, interpret the eBay decision as giving a green light to district courts to deny injunctive relief to non-manufacturing patent owners. Using an error cost framework, we examine the theory and evidence behind patent holdup concerns as they relate to injunctive relief policy. We find that the holdup theory justifying categorical limitations on injunctive relief rests upon overly narrow assumptions. As a result, categorical limitations are likely to result in substantial false positives, where patent holders with no designs of patent holdup are nonetheless denied injunctive relief. Instead of advocating categories of denial, we argue that the majority opinion in eBay can and should be read as a return to a balancing test, where costs and benefits are weighed carefully before granting or denying a patent injunction.

Pro-Human Rights but Anti-Poor?: A Critical Evaluation of the Indian Supreme Court from a Social Movement Perspective

Abstract: Judicial activism is a contested phenomenon, with the liberals and even the conservatives championing it while denouncing its particular manifestations. In this article, I examine the recent judicial practice of one of the most activist judiciaries in the world, that of India, where progressive politics is often, and sometimes always, associated with an activist and benign court. Indeed, the Indian Supreme Court has a global reputation as a torchbearer on human rights. In this article, I adopt a social movement perspective to understand the actual impact of the court on the struggles of the poor for livelihood, resources, values, and identity, enacted through struggles for the recognition and realization of economic, social, and cultural rights. After an analysis of the record of the Supreme Court of India, I conclude that the Court has increasingly shown a bias against the poor in its activist rulings and made judicial activism a more problematic device for social movements in India to rely upon. To explain why this is happening, the article introduces two ideas: first, the emergence of the judiciary as an organ of governance and its attendant problems, and second, the internally biased nature of the rights discourse which tends to reproduce binary arguments for either increasing State capacity or for increasing choice of goods in the marketplace. The article concludes by exploring lessons from the jurisprudence of other countries and international law and urges the Indian Supreme Court to reinvent a jurisprudence informed more by the social movements of the poor.

Patterns of Campaign Spending and Electoral Competition in State Supreme Court Elections

Abstract: One of the hottest topics in politics today is the method by which state supreme court justices are selected The debate over whether judges should be appointed or elected (or some combination of both) is raging in several state legislatures, as well as in the media State supreme court elections have been heavily criticized for the increasing amounts of money that have been raised and spent during campaigns for the state high court bench In this article, I examine the trends in campaign spending and electoral contests in all contested state supreme court races from 1990-2000

State abortion counseling policies and the fundamental principles of informed consent.

Abstract: Before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Gonzales v. Carhart this spring many expected that the justices would limit their discussion to the constitutionality of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act specifically in light of the laws lack of an exception for cases in which the procedure may be medically necessary to protect the pregnant womans health. But that was by no means all that the Court proffered. However indirectly Justice Anthony M. Kennedys majority opinion also moved the Court-and likely the future of the abortion debate in the states-to the very heart of the issue of informed consent. Replete with paternalistic and moralistic pronouncements Kennedys opinion asserts the "reality" that "respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child." Although forthrightly acknowledging the existence of "no reliable data to measure the phenomenon" it nonetheless labels "unexceptionable" the conclusion that "some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained." In turn it suggests that this may be the result of the information women receive or do not receive prior to consenting to the procedure. "It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns only after the event what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child a child assuming the human form." (excerpt)

Splitting the Difference: Modeling Appellate Court Decisions with Mixed Outcomes

Abstract: In rendering a decision in a particular case, judges are not limited to finding simply for the appellant or for the respondent. Rather, in many cases, they have the option to find for the former on one or more issues and for the latter on one or more other issues. By thus ‘‘splitting the difference,’’ judges can render a judgment that favors both litigants to some degree. What accounts for such mixed outcomes? Several theoretical perspectives provide potential explanations for this phenomenon. First, Galanter (1974) suggests that litigants with greater resources will achieve more favorable outcomes in the courts. Where two high-resource, repeat-player litigants meet in the appeals courts, these more sophisticated and successful parties may be able to persuade the court to render decisions with mixed outcomes that at least partially favor each party. Second, split outcomes may result from strategic interactions among the appeals court judges on the decisionmaking panel. Where majority opinion writers seek to accommodate other judges on the panel, split outcomes have the potential to serve as an inducement for more ideologically extreme judges to join the majority opinion. Finally, Shapiro and Stone Sweet (Stone Sweet 2000; Shapiro & Stone Sweet 2002) propose that courts will sometimes split the difference in order to enhance their legitimacy (and ultimately enhance compliance by losing parties). For example, in highly salient cases, where noncompliance would more clearly threaten court legitimacy, judges may be more likely to split the difference in order to mollify even the losing party. We develop an empirical model of mixed outcomes to test these propositions using data available from the U. S. Courts of Appeals Database and find evidence supportive of all three theoretical perspectives.

Advocacy Matters Before and Within the Supreme Court: Transforming the Court by Transforming the Bar

Abstract: During the past two decades, the Supreme Court has witnessed the emergence of an elite private sector group of attorneys who are dominating advocacy before the Court to an extent not witnessed since the early nineteenth century. This development is significant for the simple reason that advocacy matters, including before the Supreme Court. Better, more effective advocates influence the development of the law and there is generally no court where such advocacy can wield more far-reaching influence than the Supreme Court. And that is precisely what the modern Supreme Court Bar has quietly and increasingly been accomplishing in recent years. The Court grants the petitions filed by the expert members of the Bar at a significantly higher rate and they also prevail on the merits more frequently. This article documents the extent of the modern Bar's domination of the Court's docket, arguments, and rulings, considers the extent to which business interests who serve as the Bar's primary clients are enjoying heightened success before the Court as a result, and suggests ways of promoting a fairer allocation of Supreme Court advocacy expertise in the future.

A Neo-Institutional Explanation of State Supreme Court Responses in Search and Seizure Cases*

Abstract: To better understand the relationship between the U.S. Supreme Court and state supreme courts, we examine how Supreme Court precedent affects state supreme court decision making. Examining state su...

Judicial Review of European Anti‐Terrorism Measures—The Yusuf and Kadi Judgments of the Court of First Instance

Abstract: In the Yusuf and Kadi judgments of 21 September 2005, the Court of First Instance endorsed the Community practice of sanctioning individuals blacklisted by the United Nations (UN). It accepted that the Community uses its competence to adopt state sanctions in combination with Article 308 EC to freeze the assets of civil persons, including European citizens. The court also reduced its jurisdiction to a basic scrutiny of whether jus cogens was violated. The Court of First Instance's decisions can be criticised on various grounds. First, the application of these Articles is contrary to the wording of the Treaty and the case‐law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Further, as a consequence of the Court of First Instance's judgments, decisions of the UN Sanctions Committee become the supreme law within the EU, provided they meet the requirements of jus cogens as defined by the Court of First Instance. In addition, the individual is deprived of all fundamental rights guaranteed under European law.

Judicial Activism in Common Law Supreme Courts

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. The High Court of Australia 3. The Supreme Court of Canada 4. The Supreme Court of India 5. The Supreme Court of Ireland 6. The Supreme Court of Israel 7. The Supreme Court and Court of Appeal of New Zealand 8. The Constitutional Court and Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa 9. The House of Lords 10. The Supreme Court of the United States

Warming Up to Climate Change Litigation

Abstract: The surprise in Massachusetts v. EPA was not that it was a close, hotly contested case. Rather, the surprise was the facility and ease with which the Court majority dispatched opposing arguments and redefined prior precedents. Not content to widen doctrines on the margins, Justice Stevens' majority opinion blazed a new path through the law of standing and unearthed newfound regulatory authority for the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Under the Court's new interpretation, the Clean Air Act ("CAA" or "the Act") provides EPA with roving authority, if not responsibility, to regulate any substance capable of causing or contributing to environmental harm in the atmosphere. The federal government did much to facilitate this course, as the Environmental Protection Agency has been anything but a reluctant regulator, and as such the present administration was not the most compelling advocate for its own cause. Now that EPA has authority to regulate greenhouse gases, regulatory controls on motor vehicles are sure to follow, as will regulations on other emission sources. In time, however, Massachusetts v. EPA may come to stand for more than the simple proposition that Congress delegated authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. It may herald in a new era of state-sponsored litigation, environmental standing, and statutory interpretation - and yet still do little to cool down a warming planet.

Evidentiary Issues in the ICJ's Genocide Judgment

Abstract: Despite the commitment by the International Court of Justice (ICJ or the Court) in clarifying underlying methods and guidelines of its approach to fact-finding and evidence, it can be doubted whether the judgment delivered in the Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia case genuinely marked a decisive step towards a more transparent and reliable methodology for evidentiary matters. Behind the formula of ‘fully conclusive evidence’, when dealing with Articles II and III of the Genocide Convention the Court adopted for all practical purposes a typical criminal law ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’ standard of proof. By this choice the Court upheld in substance the argument put forward by Serbia that even if the questions of state responsibility for acts of genocide are not excluded by the scope of the Convention, they must nevertheless be judged by the same parameters of individual criminal responsibility. In reaching its conclusions the Court relied heavily on the jurisprudence of the ICTY, both as regards the ascertainment of facts and their legal qualification. It remains to be seen whether in future cases the Court will be able to adopt a similar criminal court posture, and whether it will be similarly prepared to rely on the findings of other international tribunals such as the International Criminal Court, which is not established by the Security Council.

Institutions and Equilibrium in the United States Supreme Court

Abstract: Over the last decade the scholarship on judicial politics has increasingly emphasized the strategic aspects of decision making in the United States Supreme Court. This scholarship, however, has struggled with two significant limitations—the restriction to unidimensional policy spaces and the assumption of binary comparisons of alternatives. These two assumptions have the advantage of implying stable, predictable outcomes, but lack a sound theoretical foundation and assume away potentially important aspects of strategic behavior on the Court. In this article, we identify institutional features of the Court that, under certain conditions, allow us to relax these two assumptions without sacrificing stable, predictable policy outcomes. In particular, we formalize the “part-by-part” opinion voting used by the justices, a feature that, together with separable preferences over policy issues, implies stable policy outcomes around the issue-by-issue median of the justices.

Strategy and Constraints on Supreme Court Opinion Assignment

Abstract: The assignment of the Supreme Court's majority opinions is one of the principal prerogatives enjoyed by the chief justice. A strategic chief justice is able to influence the course of legal policy through agenda-setting; that is, the chief justice exercises influence over policy by choosing the justice who will author an opinion and, thereby, determining which policy alternative will be developed in a majority opinion draft. Through strategic opinion assignment, then, the chief is able to guide the Court to an outcome that is closest to his preference or that will result in the least policy loss. Despite the importance of this prerogative for agenda-setting and the development of the law, the chief justice operates within constraints: the need for majority support for the proposed opinion and the efficient operation of the Court. In particular, the chief justice often assigns opinions to justices with whom he allies in order to maintain fragile conference majorities. Chief Justice Rehnquist also asserted that his assignments were based on the need to complete work on the cases and to maintain an equitable distribution of cases across the justices. Using data drawn from the papers of Justice Harry A. Blackmun, I test these expectations through an examination of opinion assignment during the Rehnquist Court (1986-1993 OT).

The Reagan Revolution in the Network of Law

Abstract: This paper analyzes the effect of the Rehnquist Court on Supreme Court precedent, using a network of all Court citations to other Supreme Court cases. Network analysis enables a study of the Court's use of precedent that may not be readily visible. We find that the Rehnquist Court has made a dramatic alteration in the network of precedent and, in the process, set the stage for a potentially revolutionary change in the makeup of the law.

The ICJ in the 21st Century: Judicial Restraint, Judicial Activism, or Proactive Judicial Policy

Abstract: A court of law can take various approaches when dealing with a case before it: judicial restraint, judicial activism or a proactive policy. In the present article the recent case law of the International Court of Justice is analysed in this light. The author is of the view that the Court, as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations should, wherever possible, by a careful judicial policy, apart from deciding the case in hand, give guidance and provide clarification on a number of questions which are of primordial importance in present-day international society but still are largely obscure from a legal point of view.

Keepers of the Covenant or Platonic Guardians? Decision Making on the U.S. Supreme Court

Abstract: How do the justices of the Supreme Court make their decisions? How does the Supreme Court of the United States make its decisions? The answer to these questions may not be the same. In studying judicial decision making, there has been a disconnection between individual and institutional levels of analysis. Lifetime tenure insulates individual justices and permits them to act on their substantive preferences. At the same time, the Court lacks the “sword and purse” and must rely on the other branches to fund or implement its directives. This study develops an integrative model to explain Supreme Court decision making. Using constitutional civil liberties and civil rights cases in the 1953 to 2000 period, conditions favorable to the attitudinal model, we find that institutional decision making is a function of attitudinal, strategic, and legal factors.