Measuring Attitudes toward the United States Supreme Court

It is conventional in research on the legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court to rely on a survey question asking about confidence in the leaders of the Court to indicate something about the esteem with which that institution is regarded by the American people. The purpose of this article is to investigate the validity of this measure. Based on a nationally representative survey conducted in 2001, we compare confidence with several different measures of Court legitimacy. Our findings indicate that the confidence replies seem to reflect both short-term and long-term judgments about the Court, with the greater influence coming from satisfaction with how the Court is performing at the moment. We suggest a new set of indicators for measuring the legitimacy of the Court and offer some evidence on the structure of the variance in these items.     

Strategic retirements: A political model of turnover on the United States Supreme Court

The president's ability to nominate justices to the United States Supreme Court is one of his most powerful tools for advancing his policy goals. To maximize the use of this tool it is important that he be able to determine how reasonable it is to expect a retirement from the Court during his presidency. Prior research is inconclusive as to whether Court retirements are politically motivated. In this study I develop and test a political model of Court retirements. The results from estimating the model using exponential Poisson regression show there to be an identifiable political element relating to the timing of retirements from the Court.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1990 Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia.     

The Strange Story of Judge Robert Bork and a Vacancy on the United States Supreme Court

President Reagan's nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court was expected by most people to lead to confirmation. It did not. This article examines the special importance of the vacancy created by Justice Lewis Powell's retirement, the philosophical debate which the nomination generated, the political and strategic calculations of the actors involved (especially the unprecedented level and nature of interest group involvement) and the performance of Judge Bork himself during the congressional hearings. It posits a multi-causal explanation. The importance of the episode, however, lies less in what it tells us about the Supreme Court appointment process and more in what it tells us about the current unsatisfactory condition of executive-legislative relations in a political system predicated on the separation of powers.     

The Politics of Contemporary Black Conservatism in the United States

At first sight, the themes associated with contemporary black conservatism appear to replicate the concerns of the American right more generally. However, although there are black conservative intellectuals and activists who draw on US constitutional tradition and neo-classical economics, others derive their politics from notions of racial solidarity. This form of black conservatism rests on particular constructions of black masculinity, and invokes images of a past age when black communities were both intact and stable. It regards integrationism with suspicion and hostility. However, it also offers a relatively optimistic vision of future developments that can be contrasted with the more constrained ambitions which characterise 'mainstream' American conservatism today.     

Supreme Court Litigants and Strategic Framing

Although litigants invest a huge amount of resources in crafting legal briefs for submission to the Supreme Court, few studies examine whether and how briefs influence Court decisions. This article asks whether legal participants are strategic when deciding how to frame a case brief and whether such frames influence the likelihood of receiving a favorable outcome. To explore these questions, a theory of strategic framing is developed and litigants' basic framing strategies are hypothesized based on Riker's theory of rhetoric and heresthetic as well as the strategic approach to judicial politics. Using 110 salient cases from the 1979–89 terms, I propose and develop a measure of a typology of issue frames and provide empirical evidence that supports a strategic account of how parties frame cases.     

Federalism in a Conservative Supreme Court

After years of maintaining an even balance on questions of federalism,the Supreme Court's views on the federal-state relationshiphave undergone a dramatic transformation with the recent changein the Court's composition. The new conservative majority hasproved willing to protect the states from direct regulationby the federal government in almost all circumstances. It remainsunclear, however, whether the Court will give increased protectionto state regulatory efforts-and whether the Court's new memberswill be willing to respect the autonomy of states that are exercisingtheir authority in an activist (and traditionally liberal) manner.     

The Supreme Court Prohibits Gerrymandering: A Gain or a Loss for the States?

The 1986 Davis v. Bandemer decision of the U.S. Supreme Courtdeclared partisan gerrymandering to be justiciable, but overruledthe federal district court's judgment that the Indiana legislativeredistricting plan was unconstitutional. The Court split onthe question of justiciability, and those justices who favoredjusticiability disagreed on the appropriate tests to apply intesting a districting plan for unfair partisan gerrymandering.The Court did not specify a clear measure and standard for outlawinggerrymandering. This gives state districting authorities anddistrict courts little guidance in dealing with gerrymandering.If, however, a successful measure and standard are developed,this action is likely to be beneficial to the states.     

Norms and Political Payoffs in Supreme Court Recusals

Political Behavior - In times when the public and scholarly debates around the effects of norms on political decision making are at their height—and in light of the argument that government...     

Locating Supreme Court Opinions in Doctrine Space

We develop a scaling model to estimate U.S. Supreme Court opinion locations and justice ideal points along a common spatial dimension using data derived from the citations between opinions. Citations from new opinions to precedent opinions usually apply and endorse the doctrine of the precedent opinion; however, sometimes they implicitly or explicitly dispute the precedent opinion. We collect original datasets classifying citations from search and seizure and freedom of religion opinions written between 1953 and 2006 into these different types and develop a model relating the similarity of the doctrine embodied in the citing and cited opinions to the relative probability of these different types of citations. The resulting spatial estimates of opinion location are used to evaluate theories of Supreme Court bargaining and opinion writing. We find empirical support for theoretical models that predict the majority opinion will fall at the ideal point of the median member of the majority coalition. Given the centrality of theories of judicial policymaking to various substantive problems in political science, the method of scaling opinions developed in this article can facilitate a range of future research.     

The Supreme Court and the Federal System: Federalism from Warren to Burger

The question of the relation of the states to the federal governmentis the cardinal question of our constitutional system. It cannotbe settled by the opinion of any one generation, because itis a question of growth, and each successive stage of our politicaland economic development gives it a new aspect, makes it a newquestion.¹     

美国最高法院司法审查权的确立与成长

美国宪法并没有明确规定司法审查权属于美国联邦最高法院,这使联邦最高法院的司法审查权的合法性一度引起争议.<法院与宪法>一书跳出对司法审查权单纯的法律解读,把美国联邦最高法院的司法审查权放在历史长河中考察.以通俗的语言向读者展示了联邦最高法院司法审查权确立并逐步成长的艰难历程.进而向读者表明,最高法院的司法审查权不仅仅是联邦政府权力部门较量的产物,也是各派政治力量博弈的结果.     

The Politics of Fiscal Austerity: Implications for the United States

As austerity becomes the new normal for advanced nations, questions are raised about whether nations can make the hard choices necessary to bring about a sustainable fiscal future. The political defeat experienced by so many European governments undertaking fiscal consolidations points to the vulnerabilities that leaders will face. This article shows that how some Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations have survived the daunting politics of fiscal consolidation by timing actions for periods of economic recovery and political honeymoons following elections and by pursuing deficit reduction strategies that emphasize broad sweeping changes yielding high potential for dramatic economic gains over the longer term. Unlike many European nations today, the seemingly endless appetite for US treasuries by worldwide markets give the United States the luxury of choosing to begin deficit reduction only when the economy strengthens. However, the absence of market pressure also reduces the sense of urgency, consigning national leaders to create internal crises such as the 2012 “fiscal cliff” to force their own hand. While the polarized politics characterizing our party system does not bode well for concerted fiscal action, divided government carries the potential for spreading political risks and promoting more sustainable fiscal outcomes, as it has in our recent history and in other nations as well.     

The Institutional Basis of Secessionist Politics: Federalism and Secession in the United States

According to the literature on secession, the most importantdeterminant of secessionist sentiment is a high level of grievanceexperienced by the would-be secessionist group. However, therationale behind using secession (as opposed to another strategy)as a grievance-amelioration strategy remains almost completelyunexplained. This article contends that the institutional settingin which political conflict and grievance are experienced playsa crucial role in whether secession is conceived of as a viableoption. This contention is tested by examining the institutionalenvironment of federalism and the role it played in secessionin the United States in 1860 and 1861. The United States wasuniquely vulnerable to secessionist pressures—as are allfederal states, potentially—because of institutional structuresthat gave constituent states a high level of institutional authorityand capacity; this, in turn, contributed to a discourse of states'rights that included the contested right to secede.     

Presidential Bureaucratic Power and Supreme Court Justice Voting

Presidency scholars suggest that the federal bureaucracy has become presidentialized and that the federal agencies have become a primary tool for presidential policy implementation. However, in its review of federal agency litigation, the Supreme Court stands as an important monitor of executive bureaucratic action. Here, the conditions under which Supreme Court justices choose to facilitate executive bureaucratic action are assessed. This study tests the proposition that Supreme Court justices' voting decisions to support the president's bureaucratic agents are conditioned upon theoretically interesting extra-legal factors. Logistic regression analysis was conducted on justices' votes from Supreme Court cases involving cabinet and independent agencies during the years 1953–1995. The results indicate that Supreme Court justices' voting decisions to favorably review bureaucratic actions are influenced by extra-legal factors including attitudinal, political, and external concerns.