Search results

Most scholarship on Supreme Court decision making assumes that justices' ideological preferences exhibit a uniform impact on their choices across a variety of situations. I develop a theoretical framework positing the importance of case-level context in shaping the magnitude of ideological voting on the Court. I hypothesize how issue-related factors influence this magnitude. I test the hypotheses using a multilevel modeling framework on data from the 1953-2004 terms. The results provide support for several of the hypotheses; issue salience, issue attention, the authority for the decision (statutory interpretation versus constitutionality of federal or state laws), intercourt conflict, the presence of a lower court dissent, and mandatory versus discretionary jurisdiction all significantly influence ideological voting. Overall, the article adds significant qualifications to extant theories of judicial decision making by showing how ideological voting on the Court is shaped by the varying situations that confront the justices from case to case. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

Most scholarship on Supreme Court decision making assumes that justices' ideological preferences exhibit a uniform impact on their choices across a variety of situations. I develop a theoretical framework positing the importance of case-level context in shaping the magnitude of ideological voting on the Court. I hypothesize how issue-related factors influence this magnitude. I test the hypotheses using a multilevel modeling framework on data from the 1953-2004 terms. The results provide support for several of the hypotheses; issue salience, issue attention, the authority for the decision (statutory interpretation versus constitutionality of federal or state laws), intercourt conflict, the presence of a lower court dissent, and mandatory versus discretionary jurisdiction all significantly influence ideological voting. Overall, the article adds significant qualifications to extant theories of judicial decision making by showing how ideological voting on the Court is shaped by the varying situations that confront the justices from case to case.

Does law exhibit a significant constraint on Supreme Court justices' decisions? Although proponents of the attitudinal model argue that ideology predominantly influences justices' choices, "hybrid models" posit that law and ideology exhibit discrete and concurrent effects on justices' choices. I offer a new conceptualization of legal constraint examining how legal rules permit varying degrees of ideological discretion, which establishes how strongly ideological preferences will influence justices' votes. In examining the levels-of-scrutiny legal doctrine, I posit theoretical models highlighting the differential constraining capacities of the strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, and rational basis rules. I use a multilevel modeling framework to test the hypotheses within the context of theGrayneddoctrine in free expression law. The results show that strict scrutiny, whichGraynedapplied to content-based regulations of expression, significantly constrains ideological voting, whereas intermediate scrutiny (applied to content-neutral regulations) and the low scrutiny categories each promote high levels of ideological voting.

AbstractSupreme Court job approval is sensibly connected to its decisions, particularly salient ones. We fill a gap in the literature by theorizing—via a presidential appointment mechanism—how partisan alignment with the incumbent president (presidential copartisanship) influences Supreme Court job approval. Analysis of data from 1986 to 2019 (supplemented by longer‐term confidence data) shows that a president's copartisans are significantly more approving of the Court than outpartisans. Analysis of the American Panel Survey surrounding high‐salience events during the transition from Obama to Trump shows that Republicans, who significantly increase in Court approval following Trump's election victory, are anticipatory of Trump's prospects of changing the Court. Democrats, whose approval significantly declines only after Justice Gorsuch's confirmation, are not anticipatory but reactive to the president's confirmed appointee. Our findings generate new evidence of how the president structures public opinion toward the Court, which has important implications for judicial independence and legitimacy.

Judicial power is central to democratic consolidation and the rule of law. Public support is critical for establishing and protecting it. Conventional wisdom holds that this support is rooted in apolitical factors and not dependent on who is in political power. By contrast, we argue that support may be driven by instrumental partisan motivations and therefore linked to partisan alignment with the executive. We test the argument with survey evidence from 34 African countries. To provide causal evidence, we conduct difference-in-differences analyses leveraging Ghana's three presidential transitions since 2000. Across Africa, support for judicial power is high, while trust in courts is lower. However, presidential co-partisans arelesssupportive of horizontal judicial power over the president andmoresupportive of vertical power over the people. The article demonstrates the importance of partisan alignment with the executive in shaping support for judicial power, with implications for judicial behavior and legitimacy.