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.

One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court

Abstract: Part 1 Argument: leaving things undecided democracy-promoting minimalism decisions and mistakes minimalism's substance. Part 2 Applications: no right to die? affirmative action casuistry sex and sexual orientation the first amendment and new technologies. Part 3 Antagonists: width? Justice Scalia's democratic formalism depth? from theory to practice conclusion - minimalism and democracy.

Equal Votes, Equal Money: Court-Ordered Redistricting and Public Expenditures in the American States

Abstract: Court-ordered redistricting in the 1960s radically altered representation in the United States. Through a series of important cases, beginning with Baker v. Carr in 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court established a criterion of strict equality of state legislative and U.S. House district populations. Prior to judicial intervention, unequal representation was the norm in U.S. legislatures, and in some states districts had extremely unequal populations. In 1960, the state legislative districts in only two states, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, approximated the one-person, onevote standard in both chambers (David and Eisenberg 1961). At the other extreme was the California state senate, with the smallest counties having 400 times as much representation as Los Angeles, the largest county in the state. Less than a decade after Baker v. Carr, every state in the country reshaped its legislative districts to comply with the Court’s rulings. Baker revolutionized representation and, we argue, fundamentally transformed the politics of public finance in the American states. Legal and legislative battles ended unequal representation in the state legislatures and the U.S. House by the close of the 1960s. We examine how political representation affected the distribution of state funds to counties in the United States from the 1950s through the 1980s. Our interest in the consequences of Baker v. Carr derives from three broad problems for contemporary democracy. First, there is a persistent and nagging question for political scientists: Does representation matter? Do people benefit materially from having formal legislative representation? Some economists argue that

The Interplay of Preferences, Case Facts, Context, and Rules in the Politics of Judicial Choice

Abstract: In this paper, we explore linkages between electoral politics and judicial voting behavior in the context of models that take into account personal, contextual, institutional, and case-related influences on courts. Using probit (ordered and binary), we examine the votes cast in death penalty decisions by supreme court justices in eight American states from 1983 through 1988 We anticipate and find evidence that institutional features are prominent in shaping the distribution of institutional preferences Fundamentally, justices have predispositions that are consistent with the states' electoral and ideological environments Moreover, these institutional arrangements subsequently enhance or restrict opportunities for individual members, once selected, to exhibit their predispositions Personal preferences notwithstanding, individual justices' support for the death penalty is affected by competitive electoral conditions and institutional arrangements that create linkages with the political environment Finally, ...

The Authority of Supreme Court Precedent

Abstract: We construct the complete network of 30,288 majority opinions written by the U.S. Supreme Court and the cases they cite from 1754 to 2002 in the United States Reports. Data from this network demonstrates quantitatively the evolution of the norm of stare decisis in the 19th Century and a significant deviation from this norm by the activist Warren court. We further describe a method for creating authority scores using the network data to identify the most important Court precedents. This method yields rankings that conform closely to evaluations by legal experts, and even predicts which cases they will identify as important in the future. An analysis of these scores over time allows us to test several hypotheses about the rise and fall of precedent. We show that reversed cases tend to be much more important than other decisions, and the cases that overrule them quickly become and remain even more important as the reversed decisions decline. We also show that the Court is careful to ground overruling decisions in past precedent, and the care it exercises is increasing in the importance of the decision that is overruled. Finally, authority scores corroborate qualitative assessments of which issues and cases the Court prioritizes and how these change over time.

Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes

Abstract: On profound questions of birth, death, and human choice that are raised by abortion-where opposing sides see no common ground-how can the conflict be managed? The abortion debate in the United States today involves all Americans in complex questions of sex and power, historical change, politics, advances in medicine, and competing social values. In this best-selling book, an eminent constitutional authority shows how the nation has struggled with these questions and then sets forth new approaches that reflect both sides' passionately held convictions. The paperback edition includes discussion of the latest court decisions and excerpts from the major cases, including the Supreme Court's landmark June 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.