Topic
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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TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate the influence of amicus briefs on the ideological direction of the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions, with particular attention given to theoretical and methodological issues.
Abstract: Despite the fact that amicus curiae participation is the most common method of interest group activity in the judicial arena, there is little consensus as to whether this means of participation influences the decision making of the U.S. Supreme Court. To redress this state of affairs, this research investigates the affect of amicus briefs on the ideological direction of the Court's decisions, with particular attention given to theoretical and methodological issues that have gone unexplored in previous studies. Analyzing group influence during the 1946 to 1995 terms, the results provide particularly robust evidence that pressure groups are effective in shaping the Court's policy outputs. These findings therefore indicate that elite decision makers can be influenced by persuasive argumentation presented by organized interests.
99 citations
TL;DR: The authors empirically examined Dahl's hypothesis that justices actually support the policy preferences of the presidents who appoint them and found that justices on average appear to deviate over time away from the Presidents who appointed them.
Abstract: One manner in which Presidents attempt to have an enduring policy influence is through the appointment of like-minded justices to the Supreme Court. This article empirically examines Dahl's (1957) hypothesis that justices actually support the policy preferences of the Presidents who appoint them. We study concordance with new data for measuring presidential preferences in the domains of social and economic policy and by incorporating the notion of judicial change over time. We measure presidential preferences for the modern Presidents, Franklin Roosevelt through Bill Clinton, with a survey taken from a random sample of political science scholars who study the Presidency We measure the voting behavior of the President's Supreme Court appointees through their votes in civil liberties and economics cases from 1937 to 1994. Presidents appear to be reasonably successful in their appointments in the short run, but justices on average appear to deviate over time away from the Presidents who appointed them.
99 citations
Book•
08 Oct 2004
TL;DR: The most activist Supreme Court in history as discussed by the authors traces the legal and political forces that have shaped the modern Court and focuses on the role of Justices O'Connor and Kennedy, whose deciding votes have shaped this uncharacteristically activist Court.
Abstract: When conservatives took control of the federal judiciary in the 1980s, it was widely assumed that they would reverse the landmark rights-protecting precedents set by the Warren Court and replace them with a broad commitment to judicial restraint. Instead, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice William Rehnquist has reaffirmed most of those liberal decisions while creating its own brand of conservative judicial activism. Ranging from 1937 to the present, "The Most Activist Supreme Court in History" traces the legal and political forces that have shaped the modern Court. Thomas M. Keck argues that the tensions within modern conservatism have produced a court that exercises its own power quite actively, on behalf of both liberal and conservative ends. Despite the long-standing conservative commitment to restraint, the justices of the Rehnquist Court have stepped in to settle divisive political conflicts over abortion, affirmative action, gay rights, presidential elections, and much more. Keck focuses in particular on the role of Justices O'Connor and Kennedy, whose deciding votes have shaped this uncharacteristically activist Court.
99 citations
TL;DR: This paper applied a fact model of decision making to the justices of the United States Supreme Court and found that a significant proportion of the variation in each justice's decisions can be explained by a small number of facts.
Abstract: This paper applies a fact model of decision making to the justices of the United States Supreme Court. The theoretical model assumes that the justices, as human decision makers, are incapable of considering the hundreds of facts that can affect a particular case. Rather, they rely upon a relative handful of cues to guide their decisions. The model is tested using the votes on search and seizure cases by the justices at the center of the Burger Court: White, Stewart, Powell and Stevens. The results show that a significant proportion of the variation in each justice's decisions can be explained by a small number of facts. Finally, it is shown that for these justices and these cases, there is no evidence that judges become more conservative with age.
99 citations
TL;DR: For example, the authors tried to tease from respondents to a national probability survey evidence of diffuse and specific support for the Supreme Court of the United States -and in several reports discussed the data developed and evaluated competing explanations for variations in diffuse support of the Court.
Abstract: POLITICAL SUPPORT HAS, in the decade and a half since the publication of David Easton's A Systems Analysis of Political Life,' bid fair to join the handful of concepts central to political science. In 1966, we tried to tease from respondents to a national probability survey evidence of diffuse and specific support for the Supreme Court of the United States -and in several reports discussed the data developed and evaluated competing explanations for variations in diffuse support for the Court.2 Mindful of the risks in generalizing about sup-
98 citations