The Emergence of a New Ideology: The Business Decisions of the Burger Court

Hagle, Timothy M.; Spaeth, Harold J.

doi:10.2307/2131646

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…16 The specific numbers of cases per country are as follows: Czech Republic (n = 11), Estonia (n = 42), Georgia (n = 11), Lithuania (n = 103), Moldova (n = 228), Russia (n = 86), and Slovenia (n = 93). 17 The reduction of error is calculated using the formula provided by Hagle and Spaeth (1992).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationship Between Independence and Judicial Review in Post-Communist Courts

Herron¹,

Randazzo²

2003

The Journal of Politics

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Following the collapse of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, constitutional designers codified rules establishing independent judiciaries. To what degree do these constitutional and statutory guarantees of independence reflect the actual behavior of courts? Our analysis demonstrates that official judicial power does not predict expressions of judicial reviewoverturning legislation in whole or in part. Rather, exogenous factors, including economic conditions, executive power, identity of the litigants and legal issues, influence the likelihood that courts will nullify laws. Our findings should caution both scholars and institutional designers. Both formal and informal factors create the parameters in which courts operate. Although courts have become more powerful institutions in the post-communist era, they face a diverse set of constraints on independent action.Although independent judiciaries are important actors in democratic consolidation, how expressions of judicial independence evolve in transitional societies remains unclear. Ideally, courts review legislation and government decisions under the rubric of constitutionality. That is, the judiciary is able to declare laws and actions unconstitutional and serve as a check against excesses by other branches of government. A strong judiciary in newly independent countries helps the state break with its authoritarian past and develop a constitutional culture that teaches state actors that the legal system cannot be transgressed for political gain (Brewer-Carias 1989;Larkins 1996). However, the development of an independent judiciary can be constrained by a weak institutional legacy, limited training and support for judges, and the strength of other political actors. If the judiciary does not have the authority to make independent decisions, democratic progress

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationship Between Independence and Judicial Review in Post-Communist Courts

Herron¹,

Randazzo²

2003

The Journal of Politics

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“…And importantly, these studies have primarily focused on how certain factors constrain justices, as opposed to how some factors may constrain justices, whereas others may enhance justices' ideological discretion. Another exception includes research, primarily applied in the Court's economics and business decisions, questioning the one-dimensional view that justices' votes are dominated by substantive left-right ideological preferences (e.g., Ducat & Dudley, 1987;Flango & Ducat, 1977;Hagle & Spaeth, 1992). This work shows that additional dimensions, including federalism and judicial restraint, exhibit a genuine impact on justices' votes.…”

Section: Ideology and Supreme Court Decision Makingmentioning

confidence: 93%

Choices in Context: How Case-Level Factors Influence the Magnitude of Ideological Voting on the U.S. Supreme Court

Bartels

2010

American Politics Research

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Most scholarship on Supreme Court decision making assumes that justices’ ideological preferences exhibit a uniform impact on their choices across a variety of situations. I develop a theoretical framework positing the importance of case-level context in shaping the magnitude of ideological voting on the Court. I hypothesize how issue-related factors influence this magnitude. I test the hypotheses using a multilevel modeling framework on data from the 1953-2004 terms. The results provide support for several of the hypotheses; issue salience, issue attention, the authority for the decision (statutory interpretation versus constitutionality of federal or state laws), intercourt conflict, the presence of a lower court dissent, and mandatory versus discretionary jurisdiction all significantly influence ideological voting. Overall, the article adds significant qualifications to extant theories of judicial decision making by showing how ideological voting on the Court is shaped by the varying situations that confront the justices from case to case.

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“…Almost without exception, models of Supreme Court decision making employ the ideological direction of the Court's decision as the dependent variable of choice. This measure appears in various guises; support for the individual over government is considered liberal behavior in civil liberties cases, while support for business over government is treated as conservative policy in economic cases (see, e.g., George and Epstein 1992; Hagle and Spaeth 1992). In whatever form it appears, this measure carries with it the implicit assumption that the ideological direction of any given case is a valid indicator of the directionality of the Court's outputs.…”

Section: Measuring Supreme Court Outputsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Least Dangerous Branch Revisited: New Evidence on Supreme Court Responsiveness to Public Preferences

McGuire¹,

Stimson²

2004

The Journal of Politics

188

104

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With competing assumptions and alternative empirical models, scholars have come to rather different conclusions about the impact of public preferences on the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Some have found the justices to be attentive to mass opinion, while others have judged it to be irrelevant. Across this divide, however, one assumption is widely shared; that is, political scientists generally agree upon how best to measure the Court's outputs. In this analysis, we employ an alternative estimate of the justices’ liberalism, one which we think better reflects the underlying ideological tenor of their policies. With data from 1953 to 1996, we compare time‐series models using different indicators of the Supreme Court's aggregate liberalism. Our results suggest that, in addition to being motivated by their own preferences, the justices are highly responsive to public mood, as well.

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The Emergence of a New Ideology: The Business Decisions of the Burger Court

Cited by 12 publications

References 27 publications

The Relationship Between Independence and Judicial Review in Post-Communist Courts

The Relationship Between Independence and Judicial Review in Post-Communist Courts

Choices in Context: How Case-Level Factors Influence the Magnitude of Ideological Voting on the U.S. Supreme Court

The Least Dangerous Branch Revisited: New Evidence on Supreme Court Responsiveness to Public Preferences

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