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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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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined shifts in pre-and post-decision public opinions polls and found that the average pre-to-postdecision poll shift is virtually zero.
Abstract: Evidence for the Supreme Court's legitimacy-conferring role is measured by examining shifts in pre- and postdecision public opinions polls. A study of 18 poll shifts since the 1930s indicates that the average pre- to postdecision poll shift is virtually zero. Under limited circumstances, however, larger poll shifts toward the Court's position do occur, especially when the Court makes liberal, activist decisions and when a time-lag variable is allowed for.

40 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article examined structural determinants of opinion expression by merging two theoretical perspectives: the "spiral of silence" model advanced by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, and the structural approach to communication research offered by Phillip Tichenor, George Donohue, and Clarice Olien.
Abstract: A study examined structural determinants of opinion expression by merging two theoretical perspectives: the "spiral of silence" model advanced by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, and the structural approach to communication research offered by Phillip Tichenor, George Donohue, and Clarice Olien. The study also distinguished between different forms of opinion expression in terms of: 1) the degree to which the expression is public, and 2) the degree to which feedback is immediate and potentially hostile. Subjects, 478 mass communications students at a midwestern university, were asked their opinions on two social issues, the banning of pornography and the passage of a mandatory seat-belt law. They were also asked about their perceptions of majority opinion in their hometowns and their willingness to express their opinions on these two topics in their hometowns. Results showed significant differences in willingness tc express opinion in smaller communities, i.e., those in which the media serve a predominantly distributive function, than in larger, more pluralistic ones, i.e., those in which the media serve more of a feedback function in response to the presence of diverse social and political groups. Spe:ifically, perceived congruity with majority opinion is a significant predictor of two forms of opinion expression in small, but not large, communities. Results suggest that "fear of confrontation" in smaller communities may inhibit opinion expression to a greater extent than the "fear of isolation" mechanism proposed by Noelle-Neumann. (Three figures and 2 tables of data are included; 23 references are attached.) (Author/RAE) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** PERMISSION 10 REPHODUCE THIS MATEhIAL HAS BEEN GP,ANTED BY

40 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper showed that the most common measure of the Supreme Court's ideological output, whether the Court's decision is liberal or conservative, suffers from systematic bias, and they trace this bias empirically and explain the undesirable consequences it has for empirical analyses of judicial behavior.
Abstract: Political scientists have developed increasingly sophisticated understandings of the influences on Supreme Court decision making. Yet, much less attention has been paid to empirical measures of the Court's ideological output. We develop a theory of the interactions between rational litigants, lower court judges, and Supreme Court justices. We argue that the most common measure of the Supreme Court's ideological output—whether the Court's decision is liberal or conservative—suffers from systematic bias. We trace this bias empirically and explain the undesirable consequences it has for empirical analyses of judicial behavior. Specifically, we show that, although the Court's preferences are positively correlated with the ideological direction of the justices’ decision to reverse a lower court, the attitudes of the justices are negatively related—and significantly so—to the ideological direction of outcomes that affirm lower court decisions. We also offer a solution that allows scholars to work around this “a...

39 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argued that unauthorized time-shifting constituted a fair and hence non-infringing use and that the public had more to gain than it had to lose from allowing unauthorized time shifting to continue.
Abstract: In 1984, by the margin of a single vote, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, Inc. that the home-taping of a copyrighted television broadcast for purposes of time-shifting constituted a fair use under the Copyright Act of 1976. Since that time, economic and legal commentators have generally justified the decision in terms of market failure. If time-shifting were not a fair use, the reasoning goes, then a license would be legally required; yet, the transaction costs associated with negotiating individual time-shifting licenses would prove prohibitive. As a result, the market for time-shifting licenses would likely fail, justifying the Court's finding of fair use. There is just one problem, however: the majority opinion in Sony neither expressly embraced a market failure rationale, nor referred to the potential for prohibitively high transaction costs as a justification for the Court's fair use outcome. Rather, the Court embraced a balancing approach to fair use issues. Eschewing any undue reliance on the four statutory factors found in section 107 of the Copyright Act, the Court balanced directly what the public had to gain and what it had to lose from allowing unauthorized time-shifting to continue. Concluding on the evidence presented that the public had more to gain than it had to lose, the Court held that unauthorized time-shifting constituted a fair and hence non-infringing use. Unfortunately, the market failure reinterpretation has effectively concealed Sony's true rationale and sharply limited its potential reach. Properly understood as a balancing of the competing public interests at stake, Sony becomes both: (i) more consistent with present economic understanding of the conditions necessary for optimal private market production of a public good; and (ii) generally applicable to a wide range of fair use issues.

39 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202313
202238
202114
202027
201923
201820