Standing the Test of Time: The Breadth of Majority Coalitions and the fate of U.S. Supreme Court Precedents

Predicting the Behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States: A General Approach

“…Segal and Spaeth (2002), Bailey and Maltzman (2008), Benjamin and Desmarais (2012), Epstein et al (2007a), Segal and Spaeth (1996)). While there are important limits (i.e.…”

Judicial Retirements and the Staying Power of U.S. Supreme Court Decisions

“…Indeed, previous work has found evidence consistent with this expectation. Benjamin and Desmarais () show that the aggregate number of negative treatments increases with the average distance between Supreme Court medians, and Spriggs and Hansford () have demonstrated that the Supreme Court is more likely to overrule a precedent the greater the ideological distance between the decision median and the contemporary median (see also Hansford & Spriggs ). Similarly, Westerland et al () show that increasing distance between the median member of the opinion coalition and the contemporary Supreme Court median significantly reduces compliance with precedents by circuit court panels.…”

“…Since judges on the courts of appeals occupy the level below the Supreme Court, and are directly open to review and reversal by the Supreme Court, we focus our analysis on them . To measure the subsequent treatment of Supreme Court majority opinions in the courts of appeals, we rely on Shepard's Citations , an approach that has become standard in the literature (see, e.g., Benjamin & Desmarais ; Corley ; Hansford & Spriggs ; Westerland et al ). Shepard's is a widely used, commercial legal research company that employs attorneys who examine every published state and federal court opinion, and engage in a content analysis of every citation in those opinions.…”

“…As previous work has shown, the most important characteristics of Supreme Court opinions that affect their subsequent treatment are the number of justices who signed on to the opinion, the ideological range of the majority coalition, and the number of concurrences published alongside the opinion (Benjamin & Desmarais ; Westerland et al ). The intuition for why these characteristics matter is immediate: one would expect that appeals courts are less likely to treat negatively and more likely to treat positively opinions that announce legal rules that are broadly acceptable and sensible to judges and lawyers across the ideological and jurisprudential spectrum.…”

“…A rich literature, much of it developed over the last 15 years, has illuminated this question. Thus, we now have a good understanding of how the characteristics of Supreme Court opinions—including the number of concurrences, as well as the size and breadth of the majority coalition—shape subsequent lower court treatment (Benesh & Reddick ; Benjamin & Desmarais ; Black & Spriggs ; Corley ). Similarly, scholars have made significant progress in uncovering how dynamic changes in the legal environment, including the age of Supreme Court opinions, and ideological shifts between the enacting and subsequent Supreme Courts affect how lower courts treat precedents (e.g., Westerland et al ; Hansford & Spriggs ).…”