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Two leading scholars of the Supreme Court explain and predict its decision making.
Examines the influence of precedent on the behavior of the US Supreme Court justices.
"The Supreme Court Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments is a comprehensive collection of information on the Court and the justices -- past and present. The authors have enriched the second edition not only by adding current information to the tables now include data from the Vinson Court era drawn from the newly expanded U.S. Supreme Court Judicial Database. The second edition also features a list of Internet sites relating to the Court." -- Back cover.
This book examines the American legal system, including a comprehensive treatment of the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite this treatment, the 'in' from the title deserves emphasis, for it extensively examines lower courts, providing separate chapters on state courts, the US District Courts, and the US Courts of Appeals. The book analyzes these courts from a legal/extralegal framework, drawing different conclusions about the relative influence of each based on institutional structures and empirical evidence. The book is also tied together through its attention to the relationship between lower courts and the Supreme Court. Additionally, Election 2000 litigation provides a common substantive topic linking many of the chapters. Finally, it provides extended coverage to the legal process, with separate chapters on civil procedure, evidence, and criminal procedure.
When the first Supreme Court convened in 1790, it was so ill-esteemed that its justices frequently resigned in favor of other pursuits. John Rutledge stepped down as Associate Justice to become a state judge in South Carolina; John Jay resigned as Chief Justice to run for Governor of New York; and Alexander Hamilton declined to replace Jay, pursuing a private law practice instead. As Bernard Schwartz shows in this landmark history, the Supreme Court has indeed travelled a long and interesting journey to its current preeminent place in American life. In A History of the Supreme Court, Schwartz provides the finest, most comprehensive one-volume narrative ever published of our highest court. Wi...
The behaviour and decision-making processes of the US Supreme Court have often been examined using the legal model, which holds that Supreme Court decisions are based on the 'plain meaning' of the Constitution, the intent of the framers and precedent. This book investigates the decisions and the decision-making processes of the Supreme Court using an alternative framework: the attitudinal model, which holds that Supreme Court decisions are based on the attitudes and values of justices. Using the highly reliable US Supreme Court Judicial Data Base, compiled by Professor Spaeth, the authors examine all stages of the Court's decision-making processes, from staffing and access, to case selection, votes on the merits, opinion assignments and opinion coalitions, and judicial restraint and activism, and manage to explain and predict behaviour with a greater degree of accuracy. They also include a framework for understanding the impact of judicial decisions and the place of the Court in the American political system.
In The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior, prominent political scientists critically examine the contributions to the field of public law of the pioneering scholars of judicial behavior: C. Hermann Pritchett, Glendon Schubert, S. Sidney Ulmer, Harold J. Spaeth, Joseph Tanenhaus, Beverly Blair Cook, Walter F. Murphy, J. Woodward Howard, David J. Danelski, David Rohde, Edward S. Corwin, Alpheus Thomas Mason, Robert G. McCloskey, Robert A. Dahl, and Martin Shapiro. Unlike past studies that have traced the emergence and growth of the field of judicial studies, The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior accounts for the emergence and exploration of three current theoretical approaches to the study of judicial ...
Since many legal disputes are battles over the meaning of a statute, contract, testimony, or the Constitution, judges must interpret language in order to decide why one proposed meaning overrides another. And in making their decisions about meaning appear authoritative and fair, judges often write about the nature of linguistic interpretation. In the first book to examine the linguistic analysis of law, Lawrence M. Solan shows that judges sometimes inaccurately portray the way we use language, creating inconsistencies in their decisions and threatening the fairness of the judicial system. Solan uses a wealth of examples to illustrate the way linguistics enters the process of judicial decisio...
The Choices Justices Make is a groundbreaking work that offers a strategic account of Supreme Court decision making. Justices realize that their ability to achieve their policy and other goals depends on the preferences of other actors, the choices they expect others to make, and the institutional context in which they act. All these factors hold sway over justices as they make their decisions, from which cases to accept, to how to interact with their colleagues, and what policies to adopt in their opinions. Choices is a thought-provoking, yet nontechnical work that is an ideal supplement for judicial process and public law courses. In addition to offering a unique and sustained theoretical account, the authors tell a fascinating story of how the Court works. Data culled from the Court′s public records and from the private papers of Justices Brennan, Douglas, Marshall, and Powell provide empirical evidence to support the central argument, while numerous examples from the justices′ papers animate the work.