Measuring Judicial Activism

189 Pages·2009·1.478 MB·English

by  Stefanie Lindquist, Frank Cross

Measuring Judicial Activism
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M easuring Judicial Activism
stefanie a. lindquist frank b. cross
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lindquist, Stefanie A., 1963-
Measuring judicial activism / Stefanie A. Lindquist and Frank B. Cross.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-537085-0 (hardback : acid-free paper)
1. United States. Supreme Court. 2. Political questions and judicial
power—United States. 3. Judicial review—United States.
I. Cross, Frank B. II. Title.
KF8742.L56 2009
347.73’12—dc22
2008050035
____________________________________________
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Figures and Tables xi
1 Th e Political and Academic Debate Over Judicial
Activism 1
2 Identifying Judicial Activism 29
3 Judicial Review of Federal Statutes 47
4 Judicial Review of State and Local Laws 65
5 Judicial Review of Executive Branch Actions 85
6 Justiciability and Judicial Activism 105
7 Overruling Supreme Court Precedents 121
8 A Multidimensional View of Judicial Activism 133
References 151
Table of Cases 167
Index 171
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Acknowledgments
w e are grateful to numerous friends, colleagues, and students for their
assistance with this book. First, we would like to thank Dean Larry Sager of
the University of Texas School of Law for providing a sabbatical and other
resources that enabled us to complete the manuscript. Professor Bernie
Black was also extremely generous with funding for research assistants. We also
wish to thank Dean Edward Rubin of the Vanderbilt University School of Law
for providing Lindquist with summer funding for purposes of completing the
data collection process.
We have also benefited from the assistance of many graduate, undergrad-
uate, and law students who worked hard to help us gather and refine data or
who proofed or cite-checked our sources: Jennifer Selin, Jessica Hart, Jonathan
Patton, Marine Ghulyan, Fernanda Boidi, Matthew E. Simpson, Muralidharan
Jagannathan, Helena Coronado-Salazar, Jenna Lukasik, Tyler Bexley, and
John Hudak. We are also indebted to Harold Spaeth and Sara Benesh for
compiling the remarkable United States Supreme Court Judicial Database
for public use and to Kirk Randazzo for maintaining the Web site that makes
the data so easy to obtain. Thanks also go to Paul Collins and Joe Smith for
some programming assistance. Lindquist would also like to thank Jim Morris
for his moral support and remarkable proofreading abilities, Rorie Spill
Solberg and Joe Smith for their great co-authorship on earlier related projects,
and Lori Ringhand for her willingness to review parts of the manuscript and
offer suggestions. We would also like to thank our dedicated and professional
editors at OUP, including Chris Collins, Isel Pizarro, Jaimee Biggins and

Liz Kaplan.
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