The Influence of Stare Decisis on the Votes of United States Supreme Court Justices

Segal, Jeffrey A.; Spaeth, Harold J.

doi:10.2307/2111738

Cited by 155 publications

(83 citation statements)

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“…To take a striking example, consider the role of deference to precedent in Supreme Court decision-making. On the one hand, a rigorous analysis of voting patterns on the Court finds that justices who vote against a "landmark" case-that is, a case that establishes an important precedent-tend not to switch their voting pattern in subsequent cases, even though the "landmark" case decision ought to constitute a legal precedent (Segal and Spaeth 1996a). This seems to be strong evidence that judges, at least at the Supreme Court level, do not feel constrained by legal precedents as such.…”

Section: Resolution Of Some Empirical Puzzlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Informative Precedent and Intrajudicial Communication

Mesquita¹,

Stephenson²

2002

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Section: Resolution Of Some Empirical Puzzlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Informative Precedent and Intrajudicial Communication

Mesquita¹,

Stephenson²

2002

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…By ideology and policy preferences, which I treat as synonymous, I mean that justices are predisposed to hold views on legal issues that range from liberal positions to conservative positions. In one test of the legal model, Spaeth and Segal (1999;Segal and Spaeth 1996) find that dissenters in landmark cases adhered to 474 American Political Science Review Vol. 103, No.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Constraining Capacity of Legal Doctrine on the U.S. Supreme Court

Bartels

2009

Am Polit Sci Rev

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D oes law exhibit a significant constraint on Supreme Court justices' decisions? Although proponents of the attitudinal model argue that ideology predominantly influences justices ' choices, "hybrid models" posit I n politics and government, institutions-both rules and norms-operate as important constraints that structure the decision-making processes of actors. Legislators, judges, bureaucrats, voters, and other actors make decisions within an institutional context defined by formal and informal rules that constrain individual discretion and ultimately shape actors' choices (e.g., March and Olsen 1984;McCubbins, Noll, and Weingast 1987;North 1990;Rohde 1991;Shepsle 1979). On the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices' institutional context is almost completely dominated by a web of informal rules, or norms (e.g., Epstein and Knight 1998;Maltzman, Spriggs, and Wahlbeck 2000;Murphy 1964). Perhaps the most important norm on the Court is stare decisis, or precedent, which is a facet of "the law" prescribing how past decisions should guide choices in current and related cases. 1 Supreme Court justices make rules by issuing precedents that contain legal doctrines intended to constrain not only lower court judges and actors in the political environment, but also themselves and future justices. Legal doctrines, like rules in other contexts, prescribe certain outcomes under various conditions. Consequently, legal doctrine is capable of restricting the range of viable policy alternatives, which serves to limit individual discretion in decision making by lower courts and future Supreme Courts (a la McCubbins, Brandon L. Bartels is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, George Washington University, 2115 G Street, NW, 440 Monroe Hall, Washington, DC 20052 (bartels.20@gmail.com).A previous version of this article was presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. I am extremely grateful to Lawrence Baum for his valuable comments and suggestions at all stages of this project. Thanks also to Janet Box-Steffensmeier, Roman Ivanchenko, Lindsey Levitan, Rene Lindstaedt, Kathleen McGraw, Jeffrey Segal, Joel Simmons, Oleg Smirnov, and Elliot Slotnick for their helpful suggestions. I thank Mark Richards and Herbert Kritzer for sharing their data. Finally, I am grateful to the APSR editors and three anonymous reviewers for extremely valuable feedback and suggestions. 1 In addition to precedent, other facets of the law include plain meaning and intent underlying the U.S. Constitution and statutes (see, e.g., Gates and Phelps 1996;Howard and Segal 2002). Noll, and Weingast 1987). Through this mechanism, legal doctrine allows the Court to exert control over the future course of legal policy (Bueno de Mesquita and Stephenson 2002;Jacobi and Tiller 2007). From a normative point of view, adherence to precedent sends a signal to the legal community and the mass public that the Court's legal interpretations contain considerable continuity and do not change simply because of membership chang...

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“…O juiz passa a ser visto como um verdadeiro ator político, que tem na decisão judicial a sua possibilidade de ação política; ele não decide conforme as regras, mas conforme seus interesses políticos particulares (SCHUBERT, 1963;SEGAL e SPAETH, 1993;SEGAL, 2003). As regras jurídicas só têm importância para a análise caso exerçam alguma influência sobre o comportamento dos juízes, que podem instrumentalizar tais regras de forma estratégica para atingir seus objetivos (SCHUBERT, 1964(SCHUBERT, , 1974bSEGAL e SPAETH, 1993, 1996a, 1996bROHDE, 1972aROHDE, , 1972bROHDE e SPAETH, 1976;MURPHY, 1964;EPSTEIN e KNIGHT, 1998).…”

Section: As Abordagens De Cunho Individualista: O Comportamento Polítunclassified

Abordagens teóricas na pesquisa empírica sobre o poder judiciário: diálogos, pontes, híbridos

Inatomi¹

2017

Política E Direito Na Suprema Corte Norte-Americana: Debates Teóricos E Estudos De Caso

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The Influence of Stare Decisis on the Votes of United States Supreme Court Justices

Cited by 155 publications

References 15 publications

Informative Precedent and Intrajudicial Communication

Informative Precedent and Intrajudicial Communication

The Constraining Capacity of Legal Doctrine on the U.S. Supreme Court

Abordagens teóricas na pesquisa empírica sobre o poder judiciário: diálogos, pontes, híbridos

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