Aesthetic Preferences and Policy Preferences as Determinants of U.S. Supreme Court Writing Style

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Budziak ◽  
Daniel Lempert
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Writing Style ◽  
Aesthetic Preferences

Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices

1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 557-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Segal ◽  
Albert D. Cover
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Attitudinal Model

It is commonly assumed that Supreme Court justices' votes largely reflect their attitudes, values, or personal policy preferences. Nevertheless, this assumption has never been adequately tested with independent measures of the ideological values of justices, that is, measures not taken from their votes on the Court. Using content analytic techniques, we derive independent and reliable measures of the values of all Supreme Court justices from Earl Warren to Anthony Kennedy. These values correlate highly with the votes of the justices, providing strong support for the attitudinal model.

Does Legal Doctrine Matter? Unpacking Law and Policy Preferences on the U.S. Supreme Court

2008 ◽  
Vol 102 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL A. BAILEY ◽  
FORREST MALTZMAN
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Strict Interpretation ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Speech Clause

Judicial scholars often struggle to disentangle the effects of law and policy preferences on U.S. Supreme Court decision making. We employ a new approach to measuring the effect—if any—of the law on justices' decisions. We use positions taken on Supreme Court cases by members of Congress and presidents to identify policy components of voting. Doing so enables us to isolate the effects of three legal doctrines: adherence to precedent, judicial restraint, and a strict interpretation of the First Amendment's protection of speech clause. We find considerable evidence that legal factors play an important role in Supreme Court decision making. We also find that the effect of legal factors varies across justices.

The Constrained Court

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Bailey ◽  
Forrest Maltzman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
American Law

How do Supreme Court justices decide their cases? Do they follow their policy preferences? Or are they constrained by the law and by other political actors? This book combines new theoretical insights and extensive data analysis to show that law and politics together shape the behavior of justices on the Supreme Court. The book shows how two types of constraints have influenced the decision making of the modern Court. First, the book documents that important legal doctrines, such as respect for precedents, have influenced every justice since 1950. The book finds considerable variation in how these doctrines affect each justice, variation due in part to the differing experiences justices have brought to the bench. Second, it shows that justices are constrained by political factors. Justices are not isolated from what happens in the legislative and executive branches, and instead respond in predictable ways to changes in the preferences of Congress and the president. This book shatters the myth that justices are unconstrained actors who pursue their personal policy preferences at all costs. By showing how law and politics interact in the construction of American law, this book sheds new light on the unique role that the Supreme Court plays in the constitutional order.

Disentangling Law and Policy Preferences

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Bailey ◽  
Forrest Maltzman
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
The Political ◽  
Court Case ◽  
Decisive Effect ◽  
Motivated Behavior ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Supreme Court Case

This chapter provides a theoretical framework for disentangling the political and legal perspectives on Court behavior. It shows that, indeed, the problem is knotty and how it is impossible to fully separate legal from policy-motivated behavior using only Supreme Court voting data. The knottiness of the problem is exacerbated by the fact that legal factors can exert a decisive effect on a Supreme Court case even when the voting breaks down along ideological lines. This is an incredibly important point. The relentless flow of cases in which justices break down in ideologically sensible ways should not be taken as evidence that justices' decisions are dominated by ideological policy orientations. Instead, the model makes it clear that law can be decisive even when we observe ideological patterns in Court voting. This is especially true when the justices share a consensus about the legal values in question.

The Philippine Supreme Court’s Ruling on the Mining Act: A Political Science Perspective

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Alejandro N. Ciencia
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Policy Position ◽  
Position Change ◽  
Membership Change ◽  
Attitudinal Differences

The study tests the plausibility of an attitudinal account of the Philippine Supreme Court’s December 2004 ruling reversing its original decision invalidating the financial and technical assistance agreement (FTAA) provisions of the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 or Republic Act No. 7942. As a political science-informed depiction of Supreme Court decision-making, the attitudinal account argues that justices decide cases on the basis of their ideological attitudes (i.e., personal policy preferences), and ruling reversals result from (1) composition or membership change; (2) policy position change – i.e., a change in the personal policy preferences of the justices; or (3) issue change – i.e., a change in the way the justices appreciate the issues raised by the “facts” of the case. The author tested the plausibility and/or significance of each of the three aforementioned attitude-centered accounts as explanations for the Mining Act ruling reversal. To test for composition change, the researcher analyzed the voting summaries for the January and December 2004 Mining Act rulings with focus placed on the votes of justices who either left or joined the Court in the period between the two Mining Act rulings. To test for issue change, the author conducted a qualitative content analysis of the “case facts” and “issues” that the justices were responding to in their January and December rulings and opinions on the Mining Act case. To test for policy position change, a cumulative scale of judicial votes in economic cases involving the validity of executive actions was constructed and analyzed. Cumulative scaling revealed the existence of attitudinal differences among members of the Supreme Court in 2004. It also suggested that, for the most part, the personal policy preferences of the justices remained stable. Among the three attitude-centered explanations, issue change was shown to be most significant as an explanation for the Mining Act ruling reversal. The general finding of the study is that the attitudinal perspective offers a plausible account of the reversal.

Statutory Interpretation as Diplomacy

2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Brudney
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Statutory Interpretation ◽  
Supreme Court Decisions ◽  
Federal Workplace

There is every reason to admire the transformative analytic power of the DSI thesis: Professor Eskridge has persuasively identified the realities of what courts so often do. In this article, Professor Brudney raises questions about the dynamic role that Eskridge envisions for courts as a normative matter. Because DSI relies on post-enactment changes in the broader legal and ideological culture, it allows the judiciary to reshape legislatively determined priorities in light of exogenous legal and policy developments that are often enhanced, if not created, by the courts themselves. This approach tilts the meaning of statutes toward the policy preferences of the judiciary, especially given the predictable delay and difficulty that attend congressional responses to the courts' reshaping efforts. Brudney develops and illustrates his thesis through discussion of Supreme Court decisions interpreting federal workplace statutes.

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