Supreme Court Decision-Making

Supreme Court Decision-Making PDF Author: Cornell W. Clayton
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226109550
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
What influences decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court? For decades social scientists focused on the ideology of individual justices. Supreme Court Decision Making moves beyond this focus by exploring how justices are influenced by the distinctive features of courts as institutions and their place in the political system. Drawing on interpretive-historical institutionalism as well as rational choice theory, a group of leading scholars consider such factors as the influence of jurisprudence, the unique characteristics of supreme courts, the dynamics of coalition building, and the effects of social movements. The volume's distinguished contributors and broad range make it essential reading for those interested either in the Supreme Court or the nature of institutional politics. Original essays contributed by Lawrence Baum, Paul Brace, Elizabeth Bussiere, Cornell Clayton, Sue Davis, Charles Epp, Lee Epstein, Howard Gillman, Melinda Gann Hall, Ronald Kahn, Jack Knight, Forrest Maltzman, David O'Brien, Jeffrey Segal, Charles Sheldon, James Spriggs II, and Paul Wahlbeck.

Supreme Court Decision-Making

Supreme Court Decision-Making PDF Author: Cornell W. Clayton
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226109550
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
What influences decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court? For decades social scientists focused on the ideology of individual justices. Supreme Court Decision Making moves beyond this focus by exploring how justices are influenced by the distinctive features of courts as institutions and their place in the political system. Drawing on interpretive-historical institutionalism as well as rational choice theory, a group of leading scholars consider such factors as the influence of jurisprudence, the unique characteristics of supreme courts, the dynamics of coalition building, and the effects of social movements. The volume's distinguished contributors and broad range make it essential reading for those interested either in the Supreme Court or the nature of institutional politics. Original essays contributed by Lawrence Baum, Paul Brace, Elizabeth Bussiere, Cornell Clayton, Sue Davis, Charles Epp, Lee Epstein, Howard Gillman, Melinda Gann Hall, Ronald Kahn, Jack Knight, Forrest Maltzman, David O'Brien, Jeffrey Segal, Charles Sheldon, James Spriggs II, and Paul Wahlbeck.

Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making

Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making PDF Author: Paul M. Collins, Jr.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199707227
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
The U.S. Supreme Court is a public policy battleground in which organized interests attempt to etch their economic, legal, and political preferences into law through the filing of amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs. In Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making, Paul M. Collins, Jr. explores how organized interests influence the justices' decision making, including how the justices vote and whether they choose to author concurrences and dissents. Collins presents theories of judicial choice derived from disciplines as diverse as law, marketing, political science, and social psychology. This theoretically rich and empirically rigorous treatment of decision-making on the nation's highest court, which represents the most comprehensive examination ever undertaken of the influence of U.S. Supreme Court amicus briefs, provides clear evidence that interest groups play a significant role in shaping the justices' choices.

The Myth of Judicial Activism

The Myth of Judicial Activism PDF Author: Kermit Roosevelt
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300129564
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Constitutional scholar Kermit Roosevelt uses plain language and compelling examples to explain how the Constitution can be both a constant and an organic document, and takes a balanced look at controversial decisions through a compelling new lens of constitutional interpretation.

Oral Arguments and Decision Making on the United States Supreme Court

Oral Arguments and Decision Making on the United States Supreme Court PDF Author: Timothy R. Johnson
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791461037
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
How oral arguments influence the decisions of Supreme Court justices.

Decision Making and Controversies in State Supreme Courts

Decision Making and Controversies in State Supreme Courts PDF Author: Salmon A. Shomade
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498543006
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
Foregrounding religious, racialized and gendered disputes, Decision Making and Controversies in State Supreme Courts examines state supreme court decision making during controversies. Using case studies within Alabama, Louisiana, and Wisconsin, Salmon Shomade identifies and analyses the predominant factors influencing decision making in times of court contention. In this book, Shomade assesses how the justices’ interpersonal dynamics and controversial issues of religion, race, and gender impact their decision making. Specifically, the book focuses on former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore and the Ten Commandments monument crisis, Louisiana Chief Justice Bernette Johnson and her elevation dispute, and former Wisconsin Justice David Prosser and his conflicts with two female colleagues. The book contributes to the literature on decision making in state appellate courts by building upon established models utilized for assessing these courts.

Making Civil Rights Law

Making Civil Rights Law PDF Author: Mark V. Tushnet
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195359224
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
From the 1930s to the early 1960s civil rights law was made primarily through constitutional litigation. Before Rosa Parks could ignite a Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Supreme Court had to strike down the Alabama law which made segregated bus service required by law; before Martin Luther King could march on Selma to register voters, the Supreme Court had to find unconstitutional the Southern Democratic Party's exclusion of African-Americans; and before the March on Washington and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Supreme Court had to strike down the laws allowing for the segregation of public graduate schools, colleges, high schools, and grade schools. Making Civil Rights Law provides a chronological narrative history of the legal struggle, led by Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, that preceded the political battles for civil rights. Drawing on interviews with Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP lawyers, as well as new information about the private deliberations of the Supreme Court, Tushnet tells the dramatic story of how the NAACP Legal Defense Fund led the Court to use the Constitution as an instrument of liberty and justice for all African-Americans. He also offers new insights into how the justices argued among themselves about the historic changes they were to make in American society. Making Civil Rights Law provides an overall picture of the forces involved in civil rights litigation, bringing clarity to the legal reasoning that animated this "Constitutional revolution", and showing how the slow development of doctrine and precedent reflected the overall legal strategy of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP.

A Storm over This Court

A Storm over This Court PDF Author: Jeffrey D. Hockett
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813933757
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
On the way to offering a new analysis of the basis of the Supreme Court’s iconic decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Jeffrey Hockett critiques an array of theories that have arisen to explain it and Supreme Court decision making generally. Drawing upon justices’ books, articles, correspondence, memoranda, and draft opinions, A Storm over This Court demonstrates that the puzzle of Brown’s basis cannot be explained by any one theory. Borrowing insights from numerous approaches to analyzing Supreme Court decision making, this study reveals the inaccuracy of the popular perception that most of the justices merely acted upon a shared, liberal preference for an egalitarian society when they held that racial segregation in public education violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A majority of the justices were motivated, instead, by institutional considerations, including a recognition of the need to present a united front in such a controversial case, a sense that the Court had a significant role to play in international affairs during the Cold War, and a belief that the Court had an important mission to counter racial injustice in American politics. A Storm over This Court demonstrates that the infusion of justices’ personal policy preferences into the abstract language of the Constitution is not the only alternative to an originalist approach to constitutional interpretation. Ultimately, Hockett concludes that the justices' decisions in Brown resist any single, elegant explanation. To fully explain this watershed decision—and, by implication, others—it is necessary to employ a range of approaches dictated by the case in question.

The Agenda

The Agenda PDF Author: Ian Millhiser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781734420760
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
From 2011, when Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, until the present, Congress enacted hardly any major legislation outside of the tax law President Trump signed in 2017. In the same period, the Supreme Court dismantled much of America's campaign finance law, severely weakened the Voting Rights Act, permitted states to opt-out of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, weakened laws protecting against age discimination and sexual and racial harassment, and held that every state must permit same-sex couples to marry. This powerful unelected body, now controlled by six very conservative Republicans, has and will become the locus of policymaking in the United States. Ian Millhiser, Vox's Supreme Court correspondent, tells the story of what those six justices are likely to do with their power. It is true that the right to abortion is in its final days, as is affirmative action. But Millhiser shows that it is in the most arcane decisions that the Court will fundamentally reshape America, transforming it into something far less democratic, by attacking voting rights, dismantling and vetoing the federal administrative state, ignoring the separation of church and state, and putting corporations above the law. The Agenda exposes a radically altered Supreme Court whose powers extend far beyond transforming any individual right--its agenda is to shape the very nature of America's government, redefining who gets to have legal rights, who is beyond the reach of the law, and who chooses the people who make our laws.

The Case Against the Supreme Court

The Case Against the Supreme Court PDF Author: Erwin Chemerinsky
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN: 0143128000
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Both historically and in the present, the Supreme Court has largely been a failure In this devastating book, Erwin Chemerinsky—“one of the shining lights of legal academia” (The New York Times)—shows how, case by case, for over two centuries, the hallowed Court has been far more likely to uphold government abuses of power than to stop them. Drawing on a wealth of rulings, some famous, others little known, he reviews the Supreme Court’s historic failures in key areas, including the refusal to protect minorities, the upholding of gender discrimination, and the neglect of the Constitution in times of crisis, from World War I through 9/11. No one is better suited to make this case than Chemerinsky. He has studied, taught, and practiced constitutional law for thirty years and has argued before the Supreme Court. With passion and eloquence, Chemerinsky advocates reforms that could make the system work better, and he challenges us to think more critically about the nature of the Court and the fallible men and women who sit on it.

The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court PDF Author: Tom S. Clark
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108422764
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Book Description
Provides a quantitative history of the development of constitutional law in the United States during the past 150 years.