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.

Law, legislation, and liberty: A new statement of the liberal principles of justice and political economy

Abstract: Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition Consolidated Preface Introduction Volume I Rules and Order 1.Reason and Evolution 2. Cosmos and Taxis 3. Principles and Expediency 4. The Changing Concept of Law 5. Nomos: The Law of Liberty 6. Thesis: The Law of Legislation Notes Volume 2 The Mirage of Social Justice 7. General Welfare and Particular Purposes 8. The Quest for Justice 9. 'Social' or Distributive Justice 10. The Market Order or Catallaxy 11. The Discipline of Abstract Rules and the Emotions of the Tribal Society Notes Volume 3 The Political Order of a Free People 12. Majority Opinion and Contemporary Democracy 13. The Division of Democratic Powers 14. The Public Sector and the Private Sector 15. Government Policy and the Market 16. The Miscarriage of the Democratic Ideal: A Recapitualation 17. A Model Constitution 18. The Containment of Power and the Dethronement of Politics Epilogue: The Three Sources of Human Values Notes Index of Authors cited in Volumes 1-3 Subject index to Volumes 1-3

From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality

Abstract: Do Supreme Court decisions matter? In 1896 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that railroad segregation laws were permissible under the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1954 the Court's decision in Brown v. the Board of Education held that the same constitutional provision invalidated statutes segregating public schools How great an impact did judicial rulings such as Plessy and Brown have? How much did such Court decisions influence the larger world of race relations? In From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, Michael J. Klarman examines the social and political impact of the Supreme Court's decisions involving race relations from Plessy, the Progressive Era, and the Interwar Period to World Wars I and II, Brown and the Civil Rights Movement. He explores the wide variety of consequences that Brown may have had--raising the salience of race issues, educating opinion, mobilizing supporters, energizing opponents of racial change. He concludes that Brown was ultimately more important for mobilizing southern white opposition to racial change than for encouraging direct-action protest. The decision created concrete occasions for violent confrontation--court ordered school desegregation and radicalized southern politics, leading to the election of politicians who calculated that violent suppression of civil rights demonstrations would win votes. It was such violence--vividly captured on television--that ultimately transformed northern opinion on race, leading to the enactment of landmark civil rights legislation in the mid 1960s. A fascinating investigation of the Supreme Court's rulings on race, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, spells out in exhaustive detail the political and social context against which the Supreme Court Justices operate and the consequences of those decisions on the civil rights movement and beyond.

Crafting Law on the Supreme Court: The Collegial Game

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Selecting an author: assigning the majority opinion 3. A strategic response to draft opinions 4. The decision to accommodate 5. The politics of coalition formation 6. Conclusion.

The Etiology of Public Support for the Supreme Court

Abstract: The Supreme Court, like all political institutions, requires some minimal level of support because, as the high bench performs its political and constitutional roles, the justices must on occasion stand against the winds of public opinion. With data from a recent national survey, we reexamine the levels, sources, and explanations of public support for the Supreme Court. Since racial differences in attitudes toward the Court are so great, we focus here only on the attitudes of white U.S. citizens. Our purposes are both substantive and methodological. On the substantive front, we examine changes in the etiology of support. We investigate the traditional explanations of diffuse support, but, more important, we introduce and evaluate the power of a new set of variables, political values. These political values do an uncommonly good job of predicting attitudes toward the Court. In addition, we devote particular attention to the important role of "opinion leaders" as supporters of the Court. These leaders relate to the Court in a fashion very different from that of the mass public. On the methodological front, we offer an alternative means of thinking about and capturing diffuse support for the Court among the mass public. We close with speculations about the process by which diffuse support for the Court changes over time and, more generally, the implications of attitudes among the mass public and opinion leaders for the functioning of the Supreme Court.