Agenda Setting in the Supreme Court: The Collision of Policy and Jurisprudence

Black, Ryan C.; Owens, Ryan J.

doi:10.1017/s0022381609090884

Cited by 97 publications

(106 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Thus, each state selection dummy captures the extent to which the selection method is more (or less) likely to be reviewed compared with a case originating from a Missouri Plan court. As we are examining Supreme Court auditing of lower courts, we also control for the factors associated with Supreme Court review (Black and Owens 2009a;Caldeira and Wright 1988;Perry 1991). These factors include whether there was a dissenting vote in the state supreme court, whether the state court exercised judicial review, whether the Solicitor General supported or opposed review, whether the petition involved a civil liberties issue, whether the case was legally salient, whether the petitioner alleged a conflict among the lower court, and whether there was weak, strong, or no conflict among the lower courts.…”

Section: Supreme Court Review Of State Court Decisionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nominating Commissions, Judicial Retention, and Forward-Looking Behavior on State Supreme Courts: An Empirical Examination of Selection and Retention Methods

Owens

Tahk

Wohlfarth

et al. 2015

State Politics Policy Q.

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High-profile advocates are pushing states to move away from judicial elections and toward a "merit" method because it purportedly produces the best quality judges. Quality, however, is difficult to measure empirically. Rather than attempt to measure quality, we examine whether certain types of state supreme courts are more forwardlooking than others. States are likely to desire forward-looking behavior among judges because it can protect judicial legitimacy, help states to control policy, and could be more efficient than myopic behavior. Using a recent innovation in matching called covariate-balancing propensity scores, we find that the U.S. Supreme Court is equally likely to review and reverse decisions by judges regardless of their selection or retention methods. These results suggest that state supreme court justices, no matter their paths of getting to (and staying on) their courts, are roughly equal in terms of forward-looking behavior.

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Section: Supreme Court Review Of State Court Decisionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nominating Commissions, Judicial Retention, and Forward-Looking Behavior on State Supreme Courts: An Empirical Examination of Selection and Retention Methods

Owens

Tahk

Wohlfarth

et al. 2015

State Politics Policy Q.

Self Cite

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“…But their reasoning is also clearly influenced by purely legal considerations, as manifested in their references to precedents and general juridical principles. Law-school training and years of court experience have left their mark on the justices' working methods (Black and Owens 2009;Lax and Rader 2010). Hence, although the outcome of the tribunal's rulings may have clear policy effects, the process by which these decisions evolve often has a legal-technical element.…”

Section: 1057/9781137520692 -American Exceptionalism Revisited Axmentioning

confidence: 99%

American Exceptionalism Revisited

Hadenius¹

2015

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“…First, judges are unable to costlessly achieve any legal result they want to. At least to some extent they are constrained by the legal and factual background of each case (Black and Owens 2009;Stephenson 2009, p. 200). Second, these constraints are generally more binding on the merits, where judges are required to more thoroughly justify their decision-making.…”

Section: Basic Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More generally, when judges are solely driven by ideological motivations they will either hear or dismiss cases regardless of the merits, contrary to the analysis in this paper. 19 As noted before, though, it is common to think that judges are driven by institutional/legal as well as ideological motivations (Black and Owens 2009). …”

Section: Ideological Judgesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discretionary review and undesired cases

Lavie

2015

Eur J Law Econ

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Courts sometimes face cases that may result in adverse post-judgment official or public reactions. Such real-world repercussions-e.g., open defiance by public officials-can be more costly for the court than the benefit of hearing and deciding the case. In these situations the court may be better off not taking the case from the outset. This paper examines how courts deal with such cases when they can avoid adjudication-discretionary dockets. Using a stylized screening model, the paper examines the implications of such discretion. In particular, it shows that some undesired real-world outcomes are inevitable; and that broad control over their dockets should lead judges to take fewer cases in which the government is involved. Further, the paper discusses this logic from a comparative design perspective. The two prevalent models of judicial review, the American and the European, seem to take opposing stances on discretionary review; however, both narrow supreme courts' control over their dockets, either by directly limiting their discretionary jurisdiction or by decentralizing judicial review.

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Agenda Setting in the Supreme Court: The Collision of Policy and Jurisprudence

Cited by 97 publications

References 31 publications

Nominating Commissions, Judicial Retention, and Forward-Looking Behavior on State Supreme Courts: An Empirical Examination of Selection and Retention Methods

Nominating Commissions, Judicial Retention, and Forward-Looking Behavior on State Supreme Courts: An Empirical Examination of Selection and Retention Methods

American Exceptionalism Revisited

Discretionary review and undesired cases

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