Buyer Beware? Presidential Success through Supreme Court Appointments

Segal, Jeffrey A.; Timpone, Richard J.; Howard, Robert M.

doi:10.2307/449198

Cited by 31 publications

(44 citation statements)

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“…For each justice, the Compendium gives lifetime percentages of voting liberal in each category; it also gives yearly percentages for four of the most common categories: criminal procedure, civil rights, first amendment, and economics. There is change in justices' voting propensities over time (Segal, Timpone, & Howard, 2000), sometimes quite pronounced, and sometimes quite sudden. Consequently, in determining justices' voting propensities I typically used the mean over three years or the duration of the natural court, whichever was longer.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, prior studies often are concerned with change in Supreme Court decisions in some ideological direction as the object of power use, typically through replacement changing the distribution of ideology on the Court (e.g., Grofman & Brazill, 2002;Segal, Timpone, & Howard, 2000;Segal & Spaeth, 2002). Their results are suggestive, but incomplete for two reasons.…”

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confidence: 95%

“…Most attempts to address appointment effects quantitatively have done so through examining the degree to which appointees are liberal or conservative (e.g., Baum, 1997;Grofman & Brazill, 2002;Segal & Spaeth, 2002;Segal, Timpone, & Howard, 2000). This amounts to probing appointment power use rather than appointment power, as I use the terms.…”

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confidence: 97%

“…Changes in the ideological distribution of Court decisions may occur because of a new appointment. They also may result, however, from changes in the voting propensities of sitting justices (see Epstein et al, 2003;Segal, Timpone, & Howard, 2000), due to changes in justices' ideologies, changes in the content of cases (see Baum, 1988), or both. To know the effect of a given appointment, it is not enough to look at the trend in Court decisions.…”

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confidence: 97%

“…That presidents have appointment power concerning Supreme Court decisions is widely known and discussed, by scholars and Supreme Court experts (e.g., Abraham, 1985;Cox, 1987;Dahl, 1957;Schwartz, 1983;Segal, Timpone, & Howard, 2000;Starr, 2002;Tribe, 1985) as well as by the general public. What has been missing from this discussion is quantitative assessment of how much power presidents have and how much they use it.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Presidential Power over Supreme Court Decisions

Whitmeyer

2006

Public Choice

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I calculate U.S. presidents’ power and power use concerning the ideological direction of U.S. Supreme Court decisions through their ability to appoint replacements to the Court, over the period 1946 through 2001. I test hypotheses concerning factors affecting appointment power and power use, and examine their effect on Senate confirmation votes. Of nine presidents, four have had the ability to affect the direction of more than 25 percent of Court decisions for sustained periods of time. Strongly ideological power use in appointment is found for four also. Senate confirmation votes have tended to be more favorable when the president has more appointment power. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2006

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Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 95%

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confidence: 97%

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confidence: 97%

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confidence: 99%

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Presidential Power over Supreme Court Decisions

Whitmeyer

2006

Public Choice

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Sin¹

2014

Separation of Powers and Legislative Organization

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Investigating executive and legislative interactions is critical for understanding presidential systems. Doing so requires comparing the preferences of the elites involved, which is challenging because these actors do not take positions on the same issues and are motivated by different strategic considerations. To circumvent these difficulties, we propose a new measure of the presidents ideal point based on vote returns and an assumption about the electoral connection. We illustrate the generalizabilty of this approach by estimating the preferences of U.S. presidents (and their challengers) from 1874-2010 and California governors from 1994-2010. Additionally, we use our new measure to test the effect of executive-legislative congruence on: legislative productivity (1877-1996), agency budgeting (1933-2006), and the issuance of executive orders (1945-2001). These examples demonstrate the content validity of our measure, as well as how it can be used to refine our substantive understanding of inter-branch relations.

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Congressional Decision Making and the Separation of Powers

Martin

2001

Am Polit Sci Rev

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To what extent does the separation of powers affect congressional roll call voting behavior? To answer this question, I offer a strategic model of congressional decision making that asserts members of Congress pursue public policy goals when casting roll call votes. From the equilibrium predictions of a formal model, I generate testable hypotheses by computing the expected net amount of sophisticated (nonsincere) congressional behavior given changes in decision context. I test the predictions of the theoretical model with data from all civil rights roll call votes from the 83d to the 102d Congress. The results demonstrate that both the other legislative chamber and the Supreme Court profoundly constrain House members and senators when casting roll call votes. This is strong evidence of the importance of policy outcomes to members of Congress when voting on the floor.

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Buyer Beware? Presidential Success through Supreme Court Appointments

Cited by 31 publications

References 0 publications

Presidential Power over Supreme Court Decisions

Presidential Power over Supreme Court Decisions

Bibliography

Congressional Decision Making and the Separation of Powers

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