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Supreme court

About: Supreme court is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 41858 publications have been published within this topic receiving 306787 citations. The topic is also known as: court of last resort & highest court of appeal.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyzed the connection between ideology and voting of judges using a large sample of court of appeals cases decided since 1925 and Supreme Court decisions decided since 1937 and found a conformity effect: if the number of judges appointed by Republican presidents increases (decreases) relative to the number appointed by Democratic presidents, all judges in the circuit tend to vote more conservatively.
Abstract: This paper analyzes the connection between ideology and voting of judges using a large sample of court of appeals cases decided since 1925 and Supreme Court cases decided since 1937. The ideological classifications of votes (e.g., liberal or conservative) are dependent variables in our empirical analysis and the independent variables include the party of the appointing President, the relative number of Republican and Democratic Senators at the time of the judge's confirmation, the appointment year, characteristics of the judge (e.g., gender, race and prior experience), and the ideological make-up of the judges on the court in which the judge sits as measured by the relative number of judges appointed by Republican and Democratic Presidents. We have a number of interesting results, including how a judge's voting's is affected by the voting of the other judges he serves with. We find a political-polarization effect among Justices appointed by Democratic but not by Republican Presidents; that is, the fewer the judges appointed by Democratic Presidents, the more liberally they vote. With regard to court of appeals judges, we find a conformity effect: if the number of judges appointed by Republican Presidents increases (decreases) relative to the number appointed by Democratic Presidents, all judges in the circuit tend to vote more conservatively (more liberally).

80 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Although it can be argued that legislative and judicial decision-makers preside over similar issue areas, the effects of the rules emanating from the two types of policy-makers can differ dramatically as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Although it can be argued that legislative and judicial decision-makers preside over similar issue areas, the effects of the rules emanating from the two types of policy-makers can differ dramatically. The absence of consideration of this difference represents a major shortcoming in the literature. When Congress passes a law, that law affects everyone in the same way. That is, any individual engaged in an activity regulated by the law is constrained in the same way. Any law that discriminates arbitrarily among individuals is considered to be unconstitutional. Judicial policy decisions, however, need not demonstrate this universalistic quality. The actual decision handed down in a particular case is binding only on the participants in the case. The effect that the ruling will have on other

80 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The United States Supreme Court has recently been increasing its references to what it likes to call "empirical" data as discussed by the authors, which encourages the notion that empirical findings like case law are infinitely mutable.
Abstract: The United States Supreme Court has recently been increasing its references to what it likes to call "empirical" data. A genuine issue is occasionally documented by such data, for example the "unusual" character of capital punishment in Furman v. Georgia.' In some cases, however, the intent of such references is merely to ornament an already determined result; the famous footnote 11 in Brown v. Board of Education2 is an example. The Court generally cites "empirical" studies as lawyers cite cases, treating their summary conclusions as if they were holdings in prior cases. Applied to empirical research, this treatment encourages the notion that empirical findings, like case law, are infinitely mutable. The courts are thus diverted from using empirical studies for their intended purpose: to shed light on hitherto unknown facts. A more critical use of empirical data would better inform the courts and force them to face openly those instances in which their decisions are based on theory and merely ornamented by the "facts." Assurance of critical examination in the courts would also force researchers more carefully to connect their summary conclusions with the results of their studies. In two recent decisions concerned with replacing the traditional twelve-member jury with the six-member jury, the Supreme Court admitted that there was a crucial empirical issue: whether the reduction in jury size would affect trial results. In both opinions the Court cited empirical data as proof that there was no such effect. In Williams

79 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that the ability of Court decisions to influence public opinion is a function of the salience of the issue, the political context, and case specific factors at the aggregate level.
Abstract: The theoretical and empirical debate over the ability of the U.S. Supreme Court to influence public opinion through its decisions is far from settled. Scholars have examined the question using a variety of theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence, but there is no theoretical consensus, nor are the empirical studies without methodological weaknesses. We enter this debate in an attempt to bring some clarity to the theoretical approaches, overcome some of the methodological shortcomings, and bring a yet unstudied issue area, Court decisions on gay civil rights, under scrutiny. We argue that the ability of Court decisions to influence public opinion is a function of the salience of the issue, the political context, and case specific factors at the aggregate level. At the individual level these factors are also relevant, but citizen characteristics must also be taken into consideration. Our analysis of aggregate level and individual level opinion does indeed suggest that Court decisions can influence pu...

79 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Eskridge and Baer as discussed by the authors conducted an empirical study of all 1014 Supreme Court cases between Chevron (1983) and Hamdan (2006) in which an agency interpretation of a statute was at issue.
Abstract: Dozens of law review authors and judges have proclaimed a Chevron Revolution in the Supreme Court's willingness to defer to agency interpretations, but few authors have examined this claim in a systematic empirical manner. Seeking a more factually grounded understanding, Professor William N. Eskridge, Jr. and Lauren Baer, Esq., conducted an empirical study of all 1014 Supreme Court cases between Chevron (1983) and Hamdan (2006) in which an agency interpretation of a statute was at issue. Eskridge and Baer conclude that there has not been a Chevron revolution, at the Supreme Court level anyway. The new deference regime associated with the Chevron decision continues to exist alongside older deference regimes, including Skidmore, Seminole Rock, Beth Israel, and Curtiss-Wright. Indeed, from the time it was handed down until the end of the 2005 term, Chevron was applied in only 8.3 percent of Supreme Court cases evaluating agency statutory interpretations. Instead, the Court has employed a continuum of deference regimes. This continuum is more complicated than the literature or the Court's own opinions suggest, and it is a continuum in which Chevron plays a modest, perhaps even minor, role. Perhaps the authors' most striking finding is that in the majority of cases - 53.6 percent of them - the Court does not apply any deference regime at all. Instead it relies on ad hoc judicial reasoning of the sort that typifies the Court's methodology in regular statutory interpretation cases. Eskridge and Baer find that neither Chevron nor the other deference regimes is applied consistently by the Supreme Court. The authors find some functional regularities, however. The Court is most likely to defer to agency interpretations when they are consistent with norms recognized by the Justices, reflect the application of genuine expertise to a statutory problem, and are pursuant to delegated lawmaking authority. Eskridge and Baer also find that almost all of the Justices vote ideologically; that is, conservative Justices are significantly more likely to agree with conservative agency interpretations, and liberal Justices are significantly more likely to agree with liberal ones. The last portion of the article applies the empirical findings to address normative questions. Based upon an examination of constitutional structure and legitimacy; the rule of law and the regnant super-statute, the APA; and institutional competence, Eskridge and Baer argue against proposals that either significantly expand or jettison the special Chevron two-step framework. The authors' main prescriptions are friendly amendments to the Court's practice and recommendations that judges rethink basic doctrines of statutory interpretation in light of the modern administrative state.

79 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20231,077
20222,410
2021599
20201,063
20191,149
20181,225