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.

Changing Attitudes to Punishment: Public Opinion, Crime, and Justice:

Abstract: decades. On the other hand, the sophisticated academic debate taking place in Germany regarding the determination of the legal maturity and criminal responsibility of young people points to the fact that it is not only in respect of simple age limits that British youth justice laws remain punitive and retarded. As British antisocial behavior enforcement action now contemplates the preemptive criminalization of 8-year-olds, it is reassuring that we have access to alternative European legal cultures in which a sociologically and psychologically informed and developmental approach to young people's citizenship is at least entertained by academics. It does provide a standard to which we can aspire.

Explaining the Overruling of U.S. Supreme Court Precedent

Abstract: The decision to overrule U.S. Supreme Court precedent, we argue, results from the justices' pursuit of their policy preferences within intra- and extra-Court constraints. Based on a duration analysis of cases decided from the 1946 through 1995 terms, we show that ideological incongruence between a precedent and a subsequent Court increases the chance of it being overruled. Two legal norms also exert substantive effects as the Court is less likely to overrule statutory precedents and more likely to overrule precedents that previously have been interpreted negatively by the Court. While certain precedent characteristics also influence this decision, the political environment exerts no such effect. Consequently, one of the principal implications of this research is that legal norms influence Supreme Court decision making.

The semiconstrained court: public opinion, the separation of powers, and the u.s. supreme court's fear of nonimplementation

Abstract: Numerous studies have found that elite and popular preferences influence decision making on the U.S. Supreme Court; yet, uncertainty remains about when, how, and why the Court is constrained by external pressure. I argue the justices are constrained, at least in part, because they fear nonimplementation of their decisions. I test this theory by utilizing a recent study of judicial power, which finds the Court enjoys greater implementation power in �vertical� cases (those involving criminal and civil liability) than in �lateral� cases (all others; e.g., those involving schools or government agencies). I find that Court constraint is strongest in important lateral cases�those cases in which implementation depends on support from nonjudicial actors. My findings suggest that Supreme Court constraint is driven by the justices' fear of nonimplementation and is, therefore, dependent on institutional context.

Confirmation Politics and The Legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court: Institutional Loyalty, Positivity Bias, and the Alito Nomination

Abstract: Gibson, Caldeira, and Spence (2003a, 2003b, 2005) expound the theory of positivity bias in their analysis of the legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court in the aftermath of Bush v. Gore. This theory asserts that preexisting institutional loyalty shapes perceptions of and judgments about court decisions and events. In this article, we use the theory of positivity bias to investigate the preferences of Americans regarding the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. More specifically, from the theory of positivity bias, we derive the hypothesis that preferences on the Alito confirmation are shaped by anterior commitments to the Supreme Court. Based on an analysis of a national panel survey, we find that those who have a high level of loyalty toward the Supreme Court rely much more heavily on what we term judiciousness—in contrast to ideology, policy, and partisanship—in forming their opinions on whether to confirm Alito. Thus, institutional loyalty provides a decisive frame through which Americans view the activity of their Supreme Court.

The supreme court and opinion change: An Experimental Study of the Court's Ability to Change Opinion

Abstract: In this study the author examines the extent to which the Supreme Court acts as an opinion leader through its ability to induce attitude change. The author employs an experimental design with liberal and conservative rulings on one economic and one civil liberties issue, comparing the influence of the Supreme Court, Congress, and a nonpartisan think tank as sources of policies. The design was chosen in an attempt to eliminate outside sources of influence and to determine better the Supreme Court's ability to cause change in opinion. The results demonstrate that under some circumstances the Court can indeed influence opinion in the direction of its rulings, especially for those who regard the Court positively.