Policy Preferences of Justices and Presidents

Heck, Edward V.; Shull, Steven A.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9930.1982.tb00279.x

Cited by 14 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…An early systematic examination of presidential success in Supreme Court appointments by Rohde and Spaeth (1976) stated that between 1909 and 1971 less than one-quarter of the justices voted contrary to the desires of their appointing President. Heck and Shull (1982) find a strong relationship between a President's support of civil rights and the voting behavior of that President's justices in racial equality cases.…”

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confidence: 90%

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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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confidence: 90%

“…Scores range from 0 (most conservative) to 100 (most liberal) Heck and Shull's (1982:. 330) measure provides the proportion of favorable statements Presidents made about civil rights from their content analysis (O all conservative to 100 all liberal).…”

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confidence: 99%

Buyer Beware? Presidential Success through Supreme Court Appointments

Segal

Timpone

Howard

2000

Political Research Quarterly

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“…Key words were developed for each of the four issue areas from the index of the Public Papers and we identified the number of times a president made an explicit statement about one of these policy areas in a public arena (see Appendix 1).5 The Public Papers is thoroughly indexed and is well 3 Previous research has used policy statements to ascertain presidents' ideological preferences (Heck and Shull 1982;Shull 1983; Gates and Cohen 1988). Its primary advantage over a general and unchanging ideology measure like party affiliation is that it taps more specific ideology on a yearly basis by issue area.…”

Section: An Alternative Measure Of Presidents' Policy Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy Congruence Between the President and the Solicitor General

Shull

1998

Political Research Quarterly

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This article examines the policy attention and ideological congruence between solicitors general and their appointing presidents. It builds on previous research by presenting an alternative way of measuring presidential policy preferences that varies within administrations and offers an empirical test of the congruence between presidents and their appointees. Presidential attention to four policy areas and the ideological direction of that attention through their public statements is examined to see whether chief executives' rhetoric corresponds to the filing of discretionary amicus curiae briefs by solicitors general. We find that presidential statements are an important predictor of discretionary solicitor general behavior. Thus, solicitors general are responsive to the policy attentiveness and the ideological preferences of the chief executives who appoint them.

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“…We argue that past research on the policy success of presidents has measured the policy preferences of the appointing presidents inadequately (see Heck & Shull, 1982) by equating the partisan affiliation of presidents with their policy preferences. That assumption is debatable given the ideological variation across presidents of t h e same party (Beck, 1982;Cronin, 1980).…”

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confidence: 95%

“…President Eisenhower was very different in his preferences on this issue compared with either Presidents Nixon or Reagan. Heck and Shull (1982) recognize these limitations and use the public statements of presidents as a more direct measure of policy preferences. Our study builds upon their work in two ways.…”

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confidence: 99%

Presidential Policy Preferences and Supreme Court Appointment Success

Gates

Cohen²

1989

Review of Policy Research

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Presidential appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court are major constitutional events. Few studies assess whether this political process benefits presidents with appointment opportunities. This article estimates the policy success of presidents since Eisenhower in appointing favorable justices on the racial equality issues. Previous research uses the president's party affiliation as an indirect measure of presidential preferences. This research examines the president's policy stance more directly by using presidential public statements on racial equality issues. An issue specific measure of presidential preferences shows that presidents have been more successful in appointing like-minded justices than reliance on presidential party would suggest. Regression estimates of the justices aggregate voting record on racial equality cases are robust even in light of other controls. The implications for democratic theory and future research are discussed. Copyright 1989 by The Policy Studies Organization.

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Policy Preferences of Justices and Presidents

Cited by 14 publications

References 1 publication

Buyer Beware? Presidential Success through Supreme Court Appointments

Buyer Beware? Presidential Success through Supreme Court Appointments

Policy Congruence Between the President and the Solicitor General

Presidential Policy Preferences and Supreme Court Appointment Success

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