Does the Median Justice Control the Content of Supreme Court Opinions?

Carrubba, Clifford J.; Friedman, Barry; Martin, Andrew D.; Vanberg, Georg

doi:10.2139/ssrn.998718

Cited by 23 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Some models predict that the median justice will control policy or that the opinion author will have a degree of monopoly power (Hammond, Bonneau, and Sheehan 2005; Schwartz 1992). Other models predict that the median member of the particular coalition of justices in the majority will control opinions (Carrubba et al 2007; Spriggs and Hansford 2002; Westerland 2003); and yet others predict more complicated bargaining leading to possibly indeterminate policy location (Lax and Cameron 2007).…”

Section: Measures Of Opinion Locationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They then compare the fit of those two models and find the opinion author model outperforms the bench median model. Carrubba et al (2007) attempt to identify the location of an opinion by examining patterns of concurrences. These authors develop a formal‐theoretic model which yields predictions about where an opinion should be located.…”

Section: Measures Of Opinion Locationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A final model is the “median of the majority coalition” model. This model, which has its roots in empirical work (Spriggs and Hansford 2002; Westerland 2003) but has recently been formalized as well (Carrubba et al 2007), predicts that the median member of the majority coalition will control the location of opinions. Thus, once controlling for the median member of the majority coalition—or the particular composition of a coalition of justices—neither the opinion author nor the median justice should have an effect on the location of an opinion.…”

Section: Opinion Content and Theories Of Bargainingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Locating Supreme Court Opinions in Doctrine Space

Clark

Lauderdale

2010

American J Political Sci

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We develop a scaling model to estimate U.S. Supreme Court opinion locations and justice ideal points along a common spatial dimension using data derived from the citations between opinions. Citations from new opinions to precedent opinions usually apply and endorse the doctrine of the precedent opinion; however, sometimes they implicitly or explicitly dispute the precedent opinion. We collect original datasets classifying citations from search and seizure and freedom of religion opinions written between 1953 and 2006 into these different types and develop a model relating the similarity of the doctrine embodied in the citing and cited opinions to the relative probability of these different types of citations. The resulting spatial estimates of opinion location are used to evaluate theories of Supreme Court bargaining and opinion writing. We find empirical support for theoretical models that predict the majority opinion will fall at the ideal point of the median member of the majority coalition. Given the centrality of theories of judicial policymaking to various substantive problems in political science, the method of scaling opinions developed in this article can facilitate a range of future research.

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Section: Measures Of Opinion Locationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Measures Of Opinion Locationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Opinion Content and Theories Of Bargainingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Locating Supreme Court Opinions in Doctrine Space

Clark

Lauderdale

2010

American J Political Sci

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“…The heterogeneity in the ideological positions of Supreme Court rulings that other scholars have unearthed (see e.g. Cross, 2007), along with evidence that some medians regularly dissent or concur (see Epstein and Jacobi, 2008;Carrubba et al, 2008) poses somewhat of a challenge to the assumption of purely ideological judicial voting behavior. It suggests that justices may not be willing to sign on to any outcome that is closer to their preferences, in favor of maintaining their dissenting positions.…”

Section: Implications and Testable Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competing Models of Judicial Coalition Formation and Case Outcome Determination

Jacobi

2009

Journal of Legal Analysis

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Forming a coalition on a multi-judge panel involves an inherent trade-off between coalition maximization and ideological outcome optimization. Much scholarship is premised on assumptions about how judges make that trade-off; these assumptions have consequences for how we view and measure judicial decision-making. Specifying these assumptions, formally modeling their effects, and basing measures of judicial behavior on these results offer the potential to improve analysis of judicial decision-making.This article formally explores three commonly posited modes of judicial decision-making: a minimum winning coalition model, representing attitudinalist views of judicial decision-making; a maximum winning coalition, capturing the effect of norms of joint opinion writing and collegiality; and a strategic model, incorporating the concept of the credibility of a marginal justice's threat to defect from a majority coalition. Each model yields comprehensive predictions of case outcome positions and coalition sizes under given Court compositions; the Rehnquist Court and Roberts Courts are examined here. The models are then operationalized as measures for empirical use. The different impact of the three measures is illustrated by re-running Baird and Jacobi's analysis of judicial signaling on case outcomes using each measure.

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“…In Fischman's model as in ours, a judge may vote strategically on the disposition of the case. Carrubba et al (2008) offer a majority median model in the first model to encompass both a vote on the disposition and a vote on policy. The model there, though similar, is in some respects more ambitious and in other respects less ambitious than ours.…”

Section: Adjudication Games In the Existing Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%