The Supply of Amicus Curiae Briefs in the Market for Information at the U.S. Supreme Court

Hansford, Thomas G.; Johnson, Kristen Deede

doi:10.1080/0098261x.2014.936193

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(32 reference statements)

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“…To date, studies that examine amici have largely focused on the types of organizations that submit briefs, at what stage of the legal process they submit, how much they participate, how often they are on the winning side, and why these interest groups submit briefs (e.g., Caldeira & Wright, 1990;Collins, 2008;Hansford & Johnson, 2014;Segal, 1988;Zuber, Sommer, & Parent, 2015). In addition to informing a court, amici file briefs for a variety of reasons including influencing public discourse, signaling the importance of an issue, responding to an organization's membership, or even increasing the visibility of an organization (Simpson & Vasaly, 2015).…”

Section: Categories Of Amicimentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of extra-legal sources in amicus curiae briefs submitted in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin

Marín

Horn

Miksch

et al. 2018

EPAA

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As the political arena becomes increasingly polarized, the legal arena is playing a more important role in the creation of education policy in the United States. One critical stage in the legal process for such efforts is at briefing where “amici curiae,” or friends-of-the-court, may introduce additional arguments for the court to consider through the filing of amicus curiae briefs. To explore the use of extra-legal sources by amici, we focus on the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court case Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin and ask the questions: 1) What are the types, and relative use by amici, of extra-legal sources cited in the briefs submitted in Fisher I? and 2) What is the relative use of extra-legal sources cited in amicus briefs by supporting party and by category of amici? Our findings reveal the wide-range of extra-legal sources used in amicus briefs, and that the type of extra-legal sources incorporated may be associated with who the amici are and which party they support. Ultimately, we discuss potential reasons for the differences observed in the use of extra-legal sources and offer recommendations to more effectively engage in the policy briefing process.

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Section: Categories Of Amicimentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of extra-legal sources in amicus curiae briefs submitted in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin

Marín

Horn

Miksch

et al. 2018

EPAA

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“…Moreover, some law clerks admit that justices read amicus briefs selectively, focusing their attention only on the those that passed the initial review by law clerks (Lynch : 45). Therefore, despite the justices' lack of information about the policy and legal implications of a case (Bailey et al ; Epstein and Knight ; Hansford and Johnson ; Maltzman et al ), time constraints and the huge workload may prevent them from carefully examining all information in amicus briefs.…”

Section: The Limits Of Persuasive Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, each of the assumptions underlying signaling theory can be applied to amicus filers more generally. Members of the court necessarily act in an environment of incomplete information with regard to many aspects of the cases before them (Goelzhauser and Vouvalis ; Hansford and Johnson ). In contrast, brief filers often possess precious information about the legal and policy implications of potential decisions that the justices need in order to render decisions in line with their preferences (Bailey et al : 74–75).…”

Section: Signaling Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The substantial and growing participation by amici suggests that interest groups believe these activities are influential, and empirical evidence suggests they might be right. 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 ).…”

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confidence: 99%

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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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“…Amicus curiae briefs play an important role in the dissemination of information. Supreme Court justices have incomplete information (Epstein and Knight 1998, 1999; Hansford and Johnson 2014; Johnson, Wahlbeck, and Spriggs 2006; Maltzman, Spriggs, and Wahlbeck 2000; Murphy 1964). They don’t always know the preferences of other actors, the wider implications of their rulings, or how their policies will play out.…”

Section: Sending a Signal: State Amicus Coalitions And Supreme Court mentioning

confidence: 99%

State Coalitions, Informational Signals, and Success as Amicus Curiae at the U.S. Supreme Court

Canelo

2020

State Politics Policy Q.

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States are uniquely situated as both individual governments in the federal system and entities that represent the interests of their citizens. So, what makes groups of states successful when they lobby the Supreme Court as amicus curiae filers? I argue that it is not just the number of states included in a coalition that matters, but rather which states are included. In this article, I offer a theory that implies certain types of coalitions will be more influential than others, as these coalitions can vary in how representative they are of public preferences. I use a dataset on state amicus curiae filings from 1960 to 2013 to test the implications of my theory. I find that the regional diversity of coalitions increases the odds of state amicus curiae filers obtaining their preferred outcome, but the ideological heterogeneity of the group of states does not. This latter result is interesting given that it is contrary to the theoretical expectations of the existing scholarship on state amicus filings.

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The Supply of Amicus Curiae Briefs in the Market for Information at the U.S. Supreme Court

Cited by 12 publications

References 36 publications

Use of extra-legal sources in amicus curiae briefs submitted in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin

Use of extra-legal sources in amicus curiae briefs submitted in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin

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

State Coalitions, Informational Signals, and Success as Amicus Curiae at the U.S. Supreme Court

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