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.

The institutional landscape of interest group politics and school choice

Abstract: This article provides an updated analysis of the institutional and organizational landscape surrounding the advocacy of and opposition to vouchers and other forms of school choice over the past decade at federal/national, state, and local levels. The politics of choice grew far more complex during the 1990s, with Republican control of Congress and the White House, the growth of the national charter school movement, congressional passage of pilot voucher programs, and the Supreme Court's 2002 Zelman v. Simmons-Harris ruling. Utilizing an Advocacy Coalition Framework, questions about the ideological motivations behind different forms of school choice, the particular programs that certain groups are likely to support or oppose, and the strategies—including the potential alliances and coalitions—that are increasingly employed around school choice policy are explored. A framework for understanding and analyzing policymaking in this area is offered, extending existing thinking on both school choice issues and e...

Certiorari and Compliance in the Judicial Hierarchy: Discretion, Reputation and the Rule of Four

Abstract: I develop a formal model of the interaction between auditing by the Supreme Court (certiorari) and compliance by the lower courts, presenting three challenges to the existing literature. First, I show that even discretionary certiorari (the Court can choose which cases to hear) only goes so far in inducing compliance. Second, the literature often treats the Court as a unitary actor, ignoring the Rule of Four (only four votes are needed to grant certiorari). This rule is generally assumed to limit majoritarian dominance - this is a puzzle given that the rule itself is subject to majority control. I show that it actually increases majority power by increasing lower court compliance. Finally, while sincere behavior is often taken for granted at the Supreme Court level, I show that potential non-compliance creates heretofore unrecognized incentives for the justices to conceal their true preferences, so as to induce greater compliance. They can exploit even minimal uncertainty to manipulate asymmetric informat...

The End of Court-Ordered Desegregation

Abstract: In response to three Supreme Court rulings in the early 1990s, numerous court-ordered desegregation plans have been terminated. Using a unique dataset and an event study research design, this paper explores the impact of these terminations. The results suggest that termination produces a moderate increase in racial segregation. Outside of the south, dismissal also increases the rate at which black students drop out of school and attend private school. In the south, in contrast, there is no change in the school attendance patterns of blacks. Finally, evidence is presented that whites re-enter dismissed districts in large numbers in the south. (JEL H75, I21, I28, J15, K10)

Explaining the Overruling of U.S. Supreme Court Precedent

Abstract: The decision to overrule 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 have been previously 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.

Making Rights a Reality?: Disability Rights Activists and Legal Mobilization

Abstract: 1. Introduction: legal mobilization and accommodating social movements 2. Rights and political identity in the Canadian disability movement 3. Disability equality and opportunity in the Supreme Court of Canada 4. Disability organizations and the diffusion of rights in the United Kingdom 5. Framing disability equality in the UK courts 6. Conclusions: litigation, mobilization and social movements.