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.

Framing Support for the Supreme Court in the Aftermath of Bush v. Gore

Abstract: Public support for political actors and institutions depends on the frames emphasized in elite debate, especially following a political controversy. In the aftermath of Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court made itself the object of political controversy because it effectively ended the 2000 presidential election. Opponents of the decision framed the Supreme Court ruling as partisan and “stealing the election,” while supporters framed it as a principled vote based on legal considerations. Using survey data, we examine how framing the controversy in these terms shaped the Court's public support. In so doing, we examine the distinction between specific support (e.g., confidence in officeholders) and diffuse support (e.g., institutional legitimacy). We find that framing the decision in terms of partisan decision making influences specific support, but it does not affect diffuse support. However, framing the justices' motives in terms of ending the election, a specific consequence of the decision, reduces diffuse s...

The Supreme Court and Federal Administrative Agencies: A Resource-Based Theory and Analysis of Judicial Impact

Abstract: Theorv: Government bureaucracies are strategic and implement Supreme Court opinions based upon the costs and benefits of alternative policy choices. Agencies develop these expectations from prevailing resource environments and bureaucracies are more likely to establish larger policy change when resources favor the Court because the costs of not changing their policies appear larger. Hypotheses: The amount of bureaucratic policy change due to Court opinions is a function of: (1) attributes of Supreme Court opinions-specificity of Court-ordered policy change, basis of opinions, remands, and dissents; (2) agency characteristics-policy preferences, type of proceedings, and time preferences; and (3) external actors-amicus curiae, opposing litigants, Congress, and presidents. Methods: An Ordered Probit analysis tests a multivariate model of the impact of every Supreme Court opinion reversing or remanding a federal agency decision from the 1953 through 1990 terms. Results: Agency policy change after Court opinions is influenced by the specificity of Supreme Court opinions, agency policy preferences, agency age, and amicus curiae support.

The Language of Judges

Abstract: Since many legal disputes are battles over the meaning of a statute, contract, testimony, or the Constitution, judges must interpret language in order to decide why one proposed meaning overrides another. And in making their decisions about meaning appear authoritative and fair, judges often write about the nature of linguistic interpretation. In the first book to examine the linguistic analysis of law, Lawrence M. Solan shows that judges sometimes inaccurately portray the way we use language, creating inconsistencies in their decisions and threatening the fairness of the judicial system. Solan uses a wealth of examples to illustrate the way linguistics enters the process of judicial decision making: a death penalty case that the Supreme Court decided by analyzing the use of adjectives in a jury instruction; criminal cases whose outcomes depend on the Supreme Court's analysis of the relationship between adverbs and prepositional phrases; and cases focused on the meaning of certain words in the Constitution. Solan finds that judges often describe our use of language poorly because there is no clear relationship between the principles of linguistics and the jurisprudential goals that the judge wishes to promote. A major contribution to the growing interdisciplinary scholarship on law and its social and cultural context, Solan's lucid, engaging book is equally accessible to linguists, lawyers, philosophers, anthropologists, literary theorists, and political scientists.

The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics

Abstract: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1979, this masterful examination of the most famous example of judicial failure-the case referred to as "the most frequently overturned decision in history." On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the Supreme Court's decision against Dred Scott, a slave who maintained he had been emancipated as a result of having lived with his master in the free state of Illinois and in federal territory where slavery was forbidden by the Missouri Compromise. The decision did much more than resolve the fate of an elderly black man and his family; Dred Scott v. Sanford was the first instance in which the Supreme Court invalidated a major piece of federal legislation. The decision declared that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the federal territories, thereby striking a severe blow at the the legitimacy of the emerging Republican party and intensifying the sectional conflict over slavery. This book represents a skillful review of the issues before America on the eve of the Civil War. The first third of the book deals directly with the with the case itself and the Court's decision, while the remainder puts the legal and judicial question of slavery into the broadest possible American context. Fehrenbacher discusses the legal bases of slavery, the debate over the Constitution, and the dispute over slavery and continental expansion. He also considers the immediate and long-range consequences of the decision.

The Supreme Court in American Democracy: Unraveling the Linkages between Public Opinion and Judicial Decision Making

Abstract: There is wide scholarly agreement that the frequent replacement of justices has kept the Supreme Court generally attuned to public opinion. Recent research indicates that, in addition to this indirect effect, Supreme Court justices respond directly to changes in public opinion. We explore the two causal pathways suggested to link public opinion directly to the behavior of justices and the implications of the nature and strength of these linkages for current debates concerning Supreme Court tenure. The recent increase in the stability of Court membership has raised questions about the continued efficacy of the replacement mechanism and renewed debates over mechanisms to limit judicial tenure. Our analysis provides little evidence that justices respond strategically to public opinion but provides partial support for the idea that justices' preferences shift in response to the same social forces that shape the opinions of the general public. Our analysis offers preliminary evidence that—even in the absence o...