Supreme Court Agenda Setting: Strategic Behavior during Case Selection

199 Pages·2014·3.35 MB·English

by  Udi Sommer (auth.)

Supreme Court Agenda Setting
List of Previous Publications
Home but Away: The Experience of Immigrant Parents (2009).
Supreme Court Agenda Setting
Strategic Behavior During Case Selection
Udi Sommer
SUPREME COURT AGENDA SETTING
Copyright © Udi Sommer, 2014.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-39991-5
All rights reserved.
First published in 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978–1–349–48600–7 ISBN 978–1–137–39864–2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137398642
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: May 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to my love,
Michal, and my three beautiful children —
Talia, Ori, and Inbal.
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
List of Figures i x
List of Tables x i
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xv
1 Introduction 1
2 The History and Institutions of the Writ of Certiorari 1 3
3 The Theoretical Framework: Case Selection and
Strategic Behavior on the Court 2 9
4 Voting Contingents, Cert Pivots, and Voting Volatility 4 5
5 Strategic Votes on Cert: Evidence from Justices’ Papers 61
6 Opinion Authorship and Strategic Cert 83
7 Conclusions 109
Appendix 1: SIMEX Computations 1 15
Appendix 2: The Judiciary Act of 1925 117
Appendix 3: Rules of the Supreme Court of the United States 1 29
Appendix 4: Original Material from the Blackmun Files 1 39
Notes 159
References 1 71
Index 183
This page intentionally left blank
Figures
2.1 Share of cases heard out of total number of case filings
(1998–2011) 14
4.1 Cert pivots 4 6
4.2 Merits vote distributions in various Cert votes 48
4.3 Cert vote distributions in various merits votes 4 9
4.4 The vote on Cert 5 2
4.5 P ercentage of cases in which liberal justices vote
together 5 4
4.6 Percentage of cases in which conservative justices
vote together 55
4.7 T o what extent when voting together on Cert,
ideologically proximate justices continue to vote
together on the merits 5 7
4.8 T o what extent when voting together on merits,
ideologically proximate justices had voted earlier
together on Cert as well 5 9
5.1 Doctrinal change 75
6.1 The attenuation effect 89
6.2 The attenuation effect and errors in X and in Y 90
6.3 SIMEX plots (Model I) 1 06