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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TL;DR: The authors investigated individual opinion change and judgmental accuracy in Delphi-like groups and found that the accuracy of judgmental probability forecasts increases over Delphi rounds when statistical summaries or written rationales are provided from other members of an individual's nominal group, but does not increase in a control iteration condition (without feedback).
131 citations
TL;DR: This article examined the Court's relation to patterns of partisan change to show that the traditional philosophic concern with the counter-majoritarian nature of judicial review is largely divorced from empirical reality and has relevance only during periods of partisan realignment within the political system as a whole.
Abstract: Several years ago Professor Robert Dahl argued that the traditional concern over the Supreme Court's power of judicial review was largely unfounded. Dahl demonstrated that seldom, if ever, had the Court been successful in blocking the will of a law-making majority. This paper argues that, had Dahl considered his data from a different perspective, he would have discovered that, by virtue of the recruitment process, the Court will rarely even attempt to thwart a law-making majority. Examining Dahl's data in the context of the Survey Research Center's election classification scheme, the paper focuses on the Court's relation to patterns of partisan change to show that the traditional philosophic concern with the counter-majoritarian nature of judicial review is largely divorced from empirical reality and has relevance only during periods of partisan realignment within the political system as a whole. The paper buttresses the argument that the Court's “yea-saying” power is more important than its “nay-saying” power, a realization which can serve as the premise from which a logically consistent justification of the Court's power of judicial review may be dialectically constructed.
131 citations
TL;DR: The idea that what the Warren Court was doing was somehow not really law: that the important Warren Court decisions cannot be justified by reference to conventional legal materials as discussed by the authors has been disproved.
Abstract: The Warren Court's most important decisions -- on school segregation, reapportionment, free speech, and criminal procedure -- are firmly entrenched in the law. But the idea persists, even among those who were sympathetic to the results that Warren Court reached, that what the Warren Court was doing was somehow not really law: that the Warren Court "made it up," and that the important Warren Court decisions cannot be justified by reference to conventional legal materials. It is true that the Warren Court's most important decisions cannot be easily justified on the basis of the text of the Constitution or the original understandings. But in its major constitutional decisions, the Warren Court was, in a deep sense, a common law court. The decisions in Brown v. Board of Education, Gideon v. Wainwright, Miranda v. Arizona, and even the reapportionment cases, all can be justified as common law decisions. The Warren Court's decisions in these areas resemble the paradigm examples of innovation in the common law, such as Cardozo's decision in MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co. In all of those areas, the Warren Court, although it was innovating, did so in a way that was justified by lessons drawn from precedents. And the Warren Court's decisions were consistent with the presuppositions of a common law system -- that judges should build on previous decisions rather than claiming superior insight, and that innovation should be justified on the basis of what has gone before.
130 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that failure to cope with pressing demands might lead to a severely dysfunctional loss of public support for particular officials as well as for the regime itself, and that efforts to meet demands through blatant violations of accepted rules can also cause great loss in public support.
Abstract: ANY RELATIVELY STABLE POLITY must possess means for converting many, if not most, demands made on political authorities into satisfying outputs, whether material or symbolic. Failure to cope with pressing demands might lead to a severely dysfunctional loss of public support for particular officials as well as for the regime itself. On the other hand, efforts to meet demands through blatant violations of accepted rules can also cause great loss in public support.'
128 citations
TL;DR: The role of the Supreme Court in the development of the Mexican political system is examined in this paper, where the authors examine its role in the creation of a state of legality and a claim to constitutional rule of law, at least in discourse.
Abstract: This article examines the role of the Supreme Court in the development of the Mexican political system. The judiciary provided an important source of regime legitimation, as it allowed for the consolidation of a state of legality and a claim to constitutional rule of law, at least in discourse. However, the judiciary was in effect politically subordinated to the logic of dominant party rule through both specific constitutional reforms since 1917 that weakened the possibility of judicial independence and a politics of institutional and political co-optation. The constitutional reform of 1994 has significantly altered the nature of the relationship between the executive and the Supreme Court.
128 citations