The Influence of Amicus Curiae Briefs on U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Content

Collins, Paul M.; Corley, Pamela C.; Hamner, Jesse

doi:10.1111/lasr.12166

Cited by 81 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…To assess the complexity of different regulatory consultations and differentiate between relatively straightforward proposed regulations from ones that are less clear, we made use of a dictionary‐based program called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) already used in extent literature assessing interest group lobbying dynamics in legal settings (Owens & Wedeking ; Collins et al . forthcoming) to generate a score of cognitive complexity for each regulation in our data…”

Section: Section 4: Regression Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Capital united? Business unity in regulatory politics and the special place of finance

Young

Pagliari

2015

Regulation & Governance

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While organized business is a key actor in regulatory politics, its influence is often conditional on the level of unity or conflict occurring within the business community at any given time. Most contemporary regulatory policy interventions put pressure on the normal mechanisms of business unity, as they are highly targeted and sector-specific. This raises the question of how business unity operates across a highly variegated economic terrain in which costs are asymmetric and free-riding incentives are high. In this paper, we empirically assess patterns of business unity within regulatory policymaking across different regulated sectors. Our analysis utilizes data from hundreds of regulatory policy proposals and business community reactions to them in the telecommunications, energy, agriculture, pharmaceutical, and financial sectors over a variety of institutional contexts. We find considerable empirical support for the "finance capital unity" hypothesis -the notion that the financial sector enjoys more business unity than other regulated sectors of the economy. When the financial sector is faced with new regulations, business groups from other sectors frequently come to its aid.

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Section: Section 4: Regression Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Capital united? Business unity in regulatory politics and the special place of finance

Young

Pagliari

2015

Regulation & Governance

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“…Earlier research shows that Supreme Court justices rely so heavily on information in amicus briefs, that they often signal their need for these documents to interest groups (Hansford and Johnson ). Moreover, previous works have found that amicus briefs do not just influence the justices' final decisions on the merits of a case (Box‐Steffensmeier et al ; Collins et al ), they also affect the justices' decision to hear a case in the first place, namely to “grant certiorari” to a legal case coming from a lower court (Caldeira and Wright ; Owens and Black ). In addition, other studies suggest that amicus briefs may have a significant effect on the likelihood of dissenting opinions (Collins ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Friends You Can Trust: A Signaling Theory of Interest Group Litigation Before the U.S. Supreme Court

Manzi¹,

Hall²

2017

Law Soc Rev

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How do interest groups influence U.S. Supreme Court justices to vote in favor of their preferred outcomes? Following prior research on the influence of the Solicitor General, we develop and expand on the signaling theory of interest group influence via amicus curie briefs. We argue that an interest group's ideological reputation and the nature of the ideological signal it sends in its brief both function as powerful heuristics that convey information to the justices depending on the justices' own ideological preferences. When an organization files an amicus brief advocating for an outcome seemingly contrary to its traditional preferences (i.e., an unexpected signal), this signal should be more noticeable and credible than a signal in accordance with a group's conventional views (i.e., an expected signal). However, unexpected signals should have greater influence on justices who share the brief filer's preferences. We test our signaling theory on the terms from 1991 through 2002. We find that unexpected signals (but not expected signals) are associated with Supreme Court voting, and the influence of unexpected signals appears to be particularly strong among justices who share the ideological preferences of the brief filer.

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“…Prior work suggests that the justices are asymmetrically influenced by their clerks (see Kromphardt, 2015, 2017; Ward and Weiden, 2006). Existing research also demonstrates differences in how much language the justices adopt from party and amicus curiae briefs (Corley, 2008; Collins, Corley, and Hamner, 2015) as well as lower court opinions (Corley, Collins, and Calvin, 2011). The differences among justices in some instances can be substantial.…”

Section: The Varying Tendencies Of Supreme Court Justicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Sum of its Parts: How Supreme Court Justices Disparately Shape Attention to Their Opinions

Masood

Kassow

2020

Social Science Quarterly

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Objective While studies frequently examine the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court as an institution, little is known about how individual justices influence attention to their opinions. We investigate whether inherent differences in the majority opinions of individual justices result in certain justices being systematically more influential than their peers. Methods We advance a theory in which Supreme Court adoption of prior opinions is influenced by factors that relate to the identity of the authoring justice. To test these propositions, we explore the universe of the Supreme Court's signed majority opinions from 1986 to 2000. Results We find that intricate tendencies in opinion writing vary systematically by justice in key dimensions relating to their opinions. We also discover that differences among the justices exert an asymmetric impact on citation and adherence to precedent. Conclusion The findings offer important theoretical and normative implications toward a better understanding of the impact of Supreme Court justices on attentiveness to precedent and doctrinal development.

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The Influence of Amicus Curiae Briefs on U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Content

Cited by 81 publications

References 48 publications

Capital united? Business unity in regulatory politics and the special place of finance

Capital united? Business unity in regulatory politics and the special place of finance

Friends You Can Trust: A Signaling Theory of Interest Group Litigation Before the U.S. Supreme Court

The Sum of its Parts: How Supreme Court Justices Disparately Shape Attention to Their Opinions

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