INDIVIDUAL DECISIONAL CONSISTENCY ACROSS COLLEGIAL COURTS

This article examines the decisional consistency of U.S. Supreme Court justices with lower collegial court experience in a twofold effort to expose the potential policy implications of consistent or inconsistent behavior and to show the value of longitudinal analysis of individual rather than aggregate decisional patterns. The results show a fairly high level of consistent behavior but with marked differences across the case subjects. The article concludes with an assessment of the implications for justice selection processes and Supreme Court decision-making theory.