Topic
Majority opinion
About: Majority opinion is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4107 publications have been published within this topic receiving 54845 citations. The topic is also known as: opinion of the court.
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01 Jun 1982
TL;DR: Rohde as mentioned in this paper examined the five-member decision coalitions in the oral argued civil liberties cases on the Warren Court and found that the marginal and pivotal justice was chosen to write a significantly greater share of the opinions of the Court than can be expected by chance.
Abstract: UPREME COURT scholars are interested in opinion assignment on the Court because the justice who writes the Court's opinion has substantial control over its content. Four different researchers (Danelski, 1960; Ulmer, 1970; McLauchlan, 1972; and Rohde, 1972) examined four different data sets and found that some opinion assigners, in some kinds of cases overassigned the opinion to some categories of justices close to the dissenters (see Table 1). The most ambitious of the opinion assignment studies was the one conducted by Rohde. Rohde inspected the five-member decision coalitions in the orally argued civil liberties cases on the Warren Court and found that the marginal and pivotal justice was chosen to write a significantly greater share of the opinions of the Court than can be expected by chance. The marginal justice in a five-person decision coalition is the justice in the coalition who is ideologically closest to the minority, while a pivotal justice is the justice furthest away ideologically from the opinion assigner. Why is the pivotal and marginal justice favored in opinion assignment? We learn from Rohde that in civil liberties cases the opinion assigner seeks an opinion that conforms to his own ideological views and to achieve this end he usually assigns the opinion to himself or to a justice ideologically close to him. Therefore, when the opinion assigner designates the marginal and pivotal justice to author the Court's opinion he is depriving himself of a benefit. What might the opinion assigner get in return for giving up this
19 citations
Journal Article•
19 citations
TL;DR: The authors developed 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, and found that institutional decision making is a function of attitudinal, strategic, and legal factors.
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.
19 citations
Book•
28 Dec 2008
TL;DR: The Stimulus for Legitimacy Experiment as discussed by the authors has been used to measure public opinion toward the U.S. Supreme Court and its policies in the context of African Americans.
Abstract: Preface 1. Legitimacy and American Democracy 2. Blacks, Civil Rights, and the Supreme Court 3. Establishing the Supreme Court's Legitimizing Capacity 4. Different Presses, Different Frames: Black and Mainstream Press Coverage of a Supreme Court Decision 5. Media Framing and the Supreme Court's Legitimizing Capacity 6. The Supreme Court's Legitimizing Capacity among African Americans: Support for Capital Punsihment and Affirmative Action 7. The Casual Relationship between Public Opinion toward the Court and Its Policies: The University of Michigan Affirmative Action Cases 8. Conclusion Appendix A: Stimulus for Legitimacy Experiment Appendix B: List of Black Newspapers Appendix C: Stimulus for Media Framing Experiment Appendix D: Question Wording for Media Framing Experiment Appendix E: Blacks and the U.S. Supreme Court Survey Notes Reference Index
18 citations
Book•
09 Feb 1992
TL;DR: An introduction to the Supreme Court, partisan realignment and the invalidation of state and federal politics is given in this article, along with a discussion of the critical elections of 1960-1964 toward an understanding of the US Supreme Court and realignment.
Abstract: An introduction to the Supreme Court, partisan realignment and the invalidation of state and federal politics the Civil War realignment realignment in the 1890s the New Deal realignment the critical elections of 1960-1964 toward an understanding of the Supreme Court and realignment.
18 citations