Measuring Policy Change in the U.S. Supreme Court

Baum, Lawrence

doi:10.2307/1962497

Cited by 83 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…In looking at the behavior of individual justices, we are aware that judicial behavior is not identical to judicial policy making (Baum 1988). Yet judicial policy outputs are, in essence, summations of the behavior of individual justices.…”

Section: Hypotheses Data and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divided Government and the Supreme Court

Richardson

Scheb

1993

American Politics Quarterly

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One of the common explanations for the existence of divided government is that voters, preferring moderate public policy outcomes, split their tickets in voting for president and Congress. This argument presumes that divided government in fact results in more moderate policy outcomes than would be the case under unified government. To date, no one has examined the consequences of divided government for policymaking by the Supreme Court. Does appointment of Supreme Court justices under conditions of divided government produce a more moderate Court? The authors address this question in the context of civil rights and liberties cases, looking at liberal-conservative voting by justices between 1954 and 1989, inclusive. They test a model of Supreme Court decision making that incorporates a number of factors along with the existence of divided party government at the time of a justice's appointment. These factors include the number of years the individual justice has served on the Court, and the possible effects of the increased politicization of the Court and the judicial selection process since 1968. The authors find that appointment under divided party government is a significant predictor of moderation in civil rights and liberties decision making by the Court.As divided party government became an increasingly salient feature of the American political system in the 1980s, scholars became interested in its causes and consequences (see, e.g., Cox and Kernell 1991 ;Jacobson 1990;Thurber 1991). A number of theories have been

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Section: Hypotheses Data and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divided Government and the Supreme Court

Richardson

Scheb

1993

American Politics Quarterly

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“…This focus on justice decisions, rather than aggregate outcomes of the Court, appears to produce a more moderate measure over time than the alternative. This is in the spirit of Baum (1988), who argues that the liberalism of the Warren Court and the conservatism of the Burger Court both tend to be overestimated from outcome measures (i.e., which side won or lost).…”

Section: The Supreme Courtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic Representation

Stimson,

Mackuen,

Erikson

1995

Am Polit Sci Rev

1,232

783

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¥f public opinion changes and then public policy responds, this is dynamic representation. Public I opinion is the global policy preference of the American electorate. Policy is a diverse set of acts of JL. elected and unelected officials. Two mechanisms of policy responsiveness are (1) elections change the government's political composition, which is then reflected in new policy and (2) policymakers calculate future (mainly electoral) implications of current public views and act accordingly (rational anticipation). We develop multiple indicators of policy activity for the House, Senate, presidency, and Supreme Court, then model policy liberalism as a joint function of the two mechanisms. For each institution separately, and also in a global analysis of "government as a whole," we find that policy responds dynamically to public opinion change. This responsiveness varies by institution, both in level and in mechanism, as would be expected from constitutional design.

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“…This type of cross-model comparison needs to be interpreted cautiously though. The nature of civil liberties and economics cases varies from year to year, though overall the influence of such changes is not very large (Baum 1988;Epstein et al 1998). …”

Section: General Concordancementioning

confidence: 99%

Buyer Beware? Presidential Success through Supreme Court Appointments

Segal

Timpone

Howard

2000

Political Research Quarterly

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One manner in which Presidents attempt to have an enduring policy influence is through the appointment of like-minded justices to the Supreme Court. This article empirically examines Dahl's (1957) hypothesis that justices actually support the policy preferences of the Presidents who appoint them. We study concordance with new data for measuring presidential preferences in the domains of social and economic policy and by incorporating the notion of judicial change over time. We measure presidential preferences for the modern Presidents, Franklin Roosevelt through Bill Clinton, with a survey taken from a random sample of political science scholars who study the Presidency We measure the voting behavior of the President's Supreme Court appointees through their votes in civil liberties and economics cases from 1937 to 1994. Presidents appear to be reasonably successful in their appointments in the short run, but justices on average appear to deviate over time away from the Presidents who appointed them.

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Measuring Policy Change in the U.S. Supreme Court

Cited by 83 publications

References 11 publications

Divided Government and the Supreme Court

Divided Government and the Supreme Court

Dynamic Representation

Buyer Beware? Presidential Success through Supreme Court Appointments

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