Suchergebnisse

Interest groups participate in the political process in a variety of ways. They can lobby the legislature, interact with elected and administrative executive officials, and participate in litigation either as a litigant or an amicus curiae. But the literature is scarce in exploring how interest groups behave when their stakeholders dissent. This study explores the actions by one interest group, the American Bar Association (ABA), in participating in "notice and comment" rulemaking by the Department of Labor where the ABA did not represent the legal profession. It finds that the ABA engaged in astroturfing, and that their efforts were ignored by the Department. This suggests that astroturfing may not be useful in the notice and comment rulemaking process, because the agency's unitary status allows them to discern the centralized origin of the comments. This finding is confirmed by comparing the ABA's influence on the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush, when it did represent the consensus of the legal profession.

ObjectiveThis article seeks to test group threat theory by interacting it with two other literatures: the campaign contribution literature and the racial order literature.MethodIt tests this interaction by measuring the effect of neighborhood racial composition on campaign contributions, controlling for mean adjusted gross income.ResultsIt finds that white population is negatively correlated with campaign contributions, drowning out any income effect, and using a measure of "diversity" that includes black population reverses the direction of the relationship. Thus, increasing white homogeneity appears to increase majority complacence, while increasing racial diversity leads to campaign contributions as a threat response. Contributions. (1) This study offers indirect support to group threat theory and (2) it demonstrates that campaign contributions can be a threat response.

Abstract
When the United States Supreme Court agrees to hear a case, it also determines what legal questions it will answer in that case. We investigate the variation in the Court's acceptance, alteration, and addition of questions presented (QPs) in petitions for the writ of certiorari. Examining data on granted cases from 2010–2020, we find that the Court is overwhelmingly passive, accepting the petitioners' QPs without comment in most cases. We also find variation related to ideological alignment and petitioner identity. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the Court's policymaking efforts and its exercise of agenda-setting power and underscore the important role that litigants play in legal development.