University of North Texas :: Department of Political Science :: Paul M. Collins, Jr.

Research

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Publications

Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings and Constitutional Change. With Lori A. Ringhand. 2012. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. 

Before Supreme Court nominees are allowed take their place on the high Court, they must face a moment of democratic reckoning by appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Despite the potential this holds for public input into the direction of legal change, the hearings are routinely derided as nothing but empty rituals and political grandstanding. In this book, Paul M. Collins, Jr. and Lori A. Ringhand present a different view. Using both empirical data and stories culled from more than seventy years of transcripts, they demonstrate the hearings are a vibrant and democratic forum for the discussion and ratification of constitutional change. As such, they are one of the ways in which “We the People” take ownership of the Constitution by examining the core constitutional values of those permitted to interpret it on our behalf.

Let’s Talk: Judicial Decisions at Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings. With Anna Batta, Tom Miles, and Lori A. Ringhand. 2012. Judicature 96(1): 7-15.

We bring new evidence to bear on the relevance of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings of U.S. Supreme Court nominees by investigating the discussion of judicial decisions at the hearings. We find that a substantial percentage of hearing dialogue relates to the examination of court cases. In recent decades, one out of every four questions involves the concrete discussion of judicial decisions. While the vast majority of these cases concern U.S. Supreme Court precedents, cases decided by other courts are also debated at the hearings. Though some seminal centuries-old decisions are broached at the hearings, most of the cases scrutinized involve relatively recent precedents. We also find that Democratic and Republican senators exhibit some stark differences in the issues areas implicated in the canvassing of judicial decisions. Taken as a whole, this research makes a novel contribution to our understanding of the Supreme Court confirmation process, the impact of court decisions, and the partisan nature of federal judicial selection.

On the Relationship between Public Opinion and Decision Making on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. With Bryan Calvin and Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha. 2012. Political Research Quarterly 64(4): 736-748.

The authors explore whether the federal courts act as countermajoritarian institutions by investigating the influence of public mood on decision making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals from 1961 to 2002. The results indicate that public opinion affects courts of appeals decision making indirectly through judicial replacements and institutional constrains from Congress, but the authors fail to uncover evidence that courts of appeals judges respond directly to changes in public opinion. They conclude that, absent membership turnover in the circuit or in Congress, the courts of appeals are not responsive to the will of the public.

Lower Court Influence on U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Content. With Pamela C. Corley and Bryan Calvin. 2011. Journal of Politics 73(1): 31-44.

Despite the importance of Supreme Court opinions for the American polity, scholars have dedicated little systematic research to investigating the factors that contribute to the content of the justices’ opinions. In this article, we examine the ability of lower federal courts to shape the content of Supreme Court opinions. We argue that lower court opinions will influence the content of the Court’s opinions to the extent that the justices perceive that integrating language from lower court opinions will aid them in making efficacious law and policy. Utilizing plagiarism detection software to compare lower federal court opinions with the majority opinions of the Supreme Court during the 2002–2004 terms, we uncover evidence that the Court systematically incorporates language from the lower federal courts into its majority opinions.

Cognitive Dissonance on the U.S. Supreme Court. 2011. Political Research Quarterly 64(2): 362-376.

This research examines the applicability of cognitive dissonance theory to explain a judge’s decision to author or join a separate opinion. The author proposes that, when a judge casts a counterattitudinal vote, that judge will endeavor to reduce the aversive consequences of being viewed as an inconsistent decision maker by justifying his or her attitudinally incongruent vote choice to the public in a separate opinion. The author tests this possibility by examining U.S. Supreme Court justices’ decisions to author or join concurring and dissenting opinions during the 1946 to 2001 terms. The empirical results provide qualified support for the use of separate opinions as dissonance reduction mechanisms, suggesting that dissonance theory both is applicable to the actions of elite decision makers and enjoys validity outside of a laboratory setting.

The Small Group Context: Designated District Court Judges in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. With Wendy L. Martinek. 2011. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 8(1): 177-205.

Decision making in the U.S. courts of appeals occurs primarily in three-judge panels. A substantial number of cases are decided by panels that include a judge who is a district court judge serving temporarily on the appeals bench. This means that court of appeals decision making is often a function of small groups with temporary members. Here, we examine whether designated district court judges behave differently than their court of appeals colleagues when they cast their votes in cases they are deciding as members of three-judge appellate panels. In doing so, we suggest a profitable direction for theory building vis-à-vis judicial decision making. Our analysis of the ideological direction of the votes judges cast, as well as the variance in those votes, indicates that judges on three-judge panels are influenced by the preferences of their fellow panelists, and that designated district court judges, while no more variable than their court of appeals colleagues, are more susceptible to the influence of their peers than are regular members of the courts of appeals in a nontrivial number of cases.

May It Please the Senate: An Empirical Analysis of Senate Judiciary Confirmation Hearings of Supreme Court Nominees, 1939-2009. With Lori A. Ringhand. 2011. American University Law Review 60(3): 589-641.

This paper examines the questions asked and answers given by every Supreme Court nominee who has appeared to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee since 1939. In doing so, it uses a new dataset developed by the authors. This database, which provides a much-needed empirical foundation for scholarship in emerging areas of constitutional law and political science, captures all of the statements made at the hearings and codes these comments by issue area, subissue area, party of the appointing president, and party of the questioning senator. The dataset allows us to quantify for the fist time such things as which issues are most frequently discussed at the hearings, whether those issues have changed over time, and whether they vary depending on the party of the appointing president and the party of the questioning senator. We also investigate if questioning patterns differ depending on the race or gender of the nominee. Some of our results are unsurprising: for example, the hearings have become longer. Others, however, challenge conventional wisdom: the Bork hearing is less of an outlier in several ways than is frequently assumed, and abortion has not dominated the hearings. We also discover that there is issue area variation over time, and that there are notable disparities in the issues addressed by Democratic versus Republican senators. Finally, we find that female and minority nominees face a significantly different hearing environment than do white male nominees.

Who Participates as Amici Curiae in the U.S. Courts of Appeals? With Wendy L. Martinek. 2010. Judicature 94(3): 128-136.

Though we know a great deal about amici curiae in the U.S. Supreme Court – who participates, why they participate, the nature of their arguments, and if their participation matters for case outcomes – we know very little about amici curiae in the U.S. courts of appeals. In this paper, we investigate the nature of group participation in court of appeals cases using data from the Update to the U.S. Courts of Appeals Database (1997-2002), supplemented with extensive original data collection. Our results indicate that a diverse assortment of interest groups utilize the amicus curiae brief in pursuit of their legal and political goals in these significant policymaking venues.

Friends of the Circuits: Interest Group Influence on Decision Making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. With Wendy L. Martinek. 2010. Social Science Quarterly 91(2): 397-414.

Objective. Though there is an extensive literature focused on the participation and efficacy of interest group amici curiae in the U.S. Supreme Court, there is little rigorous analysis of amici curiae in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Here, we systematically analyze the influence of amicus curiae briefs on U.S. Court of Appeals decision making to provide insights regarding both judicial decision making and the efficacy of interest groups. Methods. We use a probit model to capture influences on appellant success in the courts of appeals from 1997–2002. Results. We find that amicus briefs filed in support of the appellant enhance the likelihood of that litigant’s probability of success, but that amicus briefs filed in support of the appellee have no effect on litigation outcomes. Conclusion. Amici can help level the playing field between appellants and appellees by serving to counter the propensity to affirm in the U.S. Courts of Appeals.

Gender, Critical Mass, and Judicial Decision Making. With Kenneth L. Manning and Robert A. Carp. 2010. Law & Policy 32(2): 260-281.

We examine the role of gender in legal decision making by applying critical mass theory to the U.S. federal district courts. We analyze whether behavioral differences manifest themselves in the decision-making proclivities of male and female judges, contingent on the existence of a critical mass of female judges at a court point (i.e., each city in which a district court is located). Our results indicate that women jurists exhibit distinctive behavior in certain cases when there is a critical mass of women at a court point. These differences are most significant in criminal justice cases; modest differences between men and women are also identified in civil rights and liberties cases. Gender is not significant in labor and economic regulation cases. These findings suggest that the increasing presence of women on the federal bench could have substantial policy ramifications in the American polity.

Environmental Enforcement in Dire Straits: There is no Protection for Nothing and No Data for Free. With Victor B. Flatt. 2009. Notre Dame Law Review 85(1): 55-87.

Those charged with drafting and enforcing our environmental laws have had to work with little or no information about whether or not the programs are actually working properly.  There are a host of reasons for this, many of them having to do with availability of data that can be examined empirically.  Using newly available data on state actions in environmental enforcement, and a new dataset of state environmental expenditures which they created, the authors of this article are able to examine for the first time the relationship between state environmental expenditures and effectiveness of state environmental enforcement for all permitted sources.  They conclude that state expenditures on environmental programs are strongly associated with effective environmental compliance, which has important implications for environmental law and policy. The authors also examine the debate over the effectiveness of cooperative vs. deterrence based enforcement, relate that to findings on state expenditures, and make suggestions for improving the availability of data and environmental enforcement generally.

Counteractive Lobbying in the U.S. Supreme Court. With Lisa A. Solowiej. 2009. American Politics Research 37(4): 670-699.

Theories of counteractive lobbying assert that interest groups lobby for the purpose of neutralizing the advocacy efforts of their opponents. We examine the applicability of counteractive lobbying to explain interest group amicus curiae participation in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions on the merits. Testing the counteractive lobbying hypotheses from 1953 to 2001, we provide strong support for the contention that interest groups engage in counteractive lobbying in the nation’s highest court. Our findings indicate that, like the elected branches of government, the Supreme Court is properly viewed as a battleground for public policy in which organized interests clash in their attempts to etch their policy preferences into law.

Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making. 2008. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

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.

International Conflicts and Decision Making on the Federal District Courts. With Daniel A. Norton, Kenneth L. Manning, and Robert A. Carp. 2008. Justice System Journal 29(2): 121-144.

The international environment influences domestic politics, particularly during times of war. The traditional governmental response to such crises is to curtail the civil rights and liberties of Americans in the name of national security. Often, challenges to these restrictive policies find their way into the federal court system. However, little is known about the systematic effects of these conflicts on the choices jurists make. To redress this deficiency, we investigate whether international conflicts influence the decision making of federal district-court judges by examining the choices those judges make during periods of both war and peace. In addition, we consider whether male and female jurists react differently to periods of international unrest. We find that female judges do respond to wars, deciding cases more liberally than in peacetime, but male judges exhibit no response. As such, our results suggest that gender is an important consideration in evaluating the judicial response to war.

The Consistency of Judicial Choice. 2008. Journal of Politics 70(3): 861-873.

Despite the fact that scholars of judicial politics have developed reasonably well-specified models of the voting behavior of U.S. Supreme Court justices, little attention has been paid to influences on the consistency of the choices justices make. Aside from the methodological problems associated with failure to account for heteroskedasticity with regard to the justices’ voting behavior, I argue that variance in judicial choice is also of theoretical import. Simply put, by uncovering influences on the stability of judicial choice, a more complete understanding of judicial decision making is provided. I explore this possibility by developing a theoretical framework that identifies influences on the consistency of judicial choice, which are then subjected to empirical testing. I show that the stability of judicial decision making is affected by attitudinal and strategic factors, as well as the Court’s informational environment. The result is a more fully integrated model of Supreme Court decision making.

The Solicitor General’s Amicus Curiae Strategies in the Supreme Court. With Chris Nicholson. 2008. American Politics Research 36(3): 382-415.

Scholars have devoted a great deal of research to investigating the role and influence of the U.S. solicitor general (SG) as amicus curiae in the Supreme Court. Yet, we know little about the SG’s decision to file an amicus brief and how this relates to the SG’s success on the merits. We fill this void by examining legal, political, and administrative factors that affect the SG’s decision to participate as amicus curiae. We subject our hypotheses to empirical testing using data on the 1953 to 1999 Supreme Court terms by linking the SG’s decision to file an amicus brief to the SG’s ultimate success on the merits, employing a Heckman-style selection model. We find that the SG’s decision to file an amicus brief is influenced by legal, political, and administrative considerations, suggesting that the SG is best viewed through the incorporation of a variety of theoretical perspectives.

Amici Curiae and Dissensus on the U.S. Supreme Court. 2008. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 5(1): 143-170.

A great deal of empirical research has focused on explaining why U.S. Supreme Court Justices partake in nonconsensual opinion writing. However, little attention has been paid to the role of organized interests in contributing to a Justice’s decision to write or join a separate opinion. I argue that a Justice’s decision to engage in this behavior is a partial function of interest group amicus curiae participation in the Court. By providing the Justices with a myriad of information regarding how cases should be resolved, organized interests create ambiguity in the Justices’ already uncertain decision making, at the same time providing them with a substantial foundation for concurring or dissenting opinions. I subject this argument to empirical validation by examining the Justices’ decisions to author or join regular concurring, special concurring, and dissenting opinions during the 1946–1995 terms. The results indicate that organized interests play a considerable role in increasing dissensus on the Supreme Court.

Transforming the United States Courts of Appeals Data Bases in Stata. 2008. Law & Courts 18(1): 19-22.

Scholars studying the U.S. Courts of Appeals overwhelmingly employ one of two publicly available datasets (Kuersten and Haire 2007; Songer 2007). While these data bases contain a treasure trove of information, they are organized such that the unit of analysis is the case, which makes some research questions more easily tackled than others. This article provides easily implemented Stata codes to reliably transform the unit of analysis in these datasets from the case to the judge-vote, thus allowing scholars to investigate Court of Appeals decision making at the level of the individual judge.

Interest Group Participation, Competition, and Conflict in the U.S. Supreme Court. With Lisa A. Solowiej. 2007. Law & Social Inquiry 32(4): 955-984.

In this article, we analyze how pluralistic, competitive, and conflictual interest group amicus curiae participation is in the U.S. Supreme Court. Examining participating organizations and briefs during the 1995 term, we address three inquiries. First, we scrutinize the types of organized interests who participate as amici curiae. We find that the Court is open to a wide array of interests and that particular types of groups do not dominate amicus activity. Second, we analyze the frequency with which amici file briefs on opposing sides of dispute. We reveal few strict patterns of competition, suggesting that Supreme Court cases are salient to a diverse spectrum of interest groups, many of which are not usually thought of as being in competition with one another. Third, we investigate how often and which amici directly cite one another for purposes of invalidating each other’s argumentation. While amici have a great deal of opportunity for this form of direct conflict, it is surprisingly rare. Nonetheless, when amici engage in this express form of discord, they play a clear role in shaping the flow of information at the Court.

Towards an Integrated Model of the U.S. Supreme Court's Federalism Decision Making. 2007. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 37(4): 505-531.

Disputes involving the boundaries of state versus federal power make up a substantial portion of the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket and have undergone extensive analysis. Yet, the conventional wisdom regarding the justices’ choices in these cases is that they are highly inconsistent. I argue that this is primarily a function of the failure of scholars to develop a comprehensive model of the justices’ federalism decision making. To remedy this, I introduce an integrated model of the individual justices’ choices in these cases, which is then subjected to empirical testing in the Rehnquist Court era (1986-2004). I explore a host of determinants of the justices’ decision making, including attitudinal, institutional, legal, and personal attributes, as well as the role of organized interests in the Court. The findings reveal that the choices justices make in these cases are not as discordant as most commentators suggest. Rather, they are relatively predictable through the application of an integrated model of judicial choice.

Lobbyists before the U.S. Supreme Court: Investigating the Influence of Amicus Curiae Briefs. 2007. Political Research Quarterly 60(1): 55-70.

Despite the fact that amicus curiae participation is the most common method of interest group activity in the judicial arena, there is little consensus as to whether this means of participation influences the decision making of the U.S. Supreme Court. To redress this state of affairs, this research investigates the affect of amicus briefs on the ideological direction of the Court’s decisions, with particular attention given to theoretical and methodological issues that have gone unexplored in previous studies. Analyzing group influence during the 1946 to 1995 terms, the results provide particularly robust evidence that pressure groups are effective in shaping the Court’s policy outputs. These findings therefore indicate that elite decision makers can be influenced by persuasive argumentation presented by organized interests.

Transforming the Original U.S. Supreme Court Judicial Database: An Alternative Approach for use with Stata. 2006. Law & Courts 16(1): 22-24.

One of the most commonly employed datasets on the U.S. Supreme Court is ALLCOURT, the Original United States Supreme Court Judicial Database.  Yet, the structure of ALLCOURT is set up such that the case is the unit of analysis, which makes certain types of research questions more easily broached than others.  This article provides an easily implemented code for Stata that allows users to reliably transform the unit of analysis in ALLCOURT from the case to the justice-vote.

Friends of the Court: Examining the Influence of Amicus Curiae Participation in U.S. Supreme Court Litigation.  2004.  Law & Society Review 38(4): 807-32.

Amicus curiae participation is a staple of interest group activity in the U.S. Supreme Court. While a reasonably large body of scholarship has accumulated regarding the effectiveness of this method of participation, little attention has been paid to examining the reasons why amicus participation might increase litigation success. In this article I test two separate, but not mutually exclusive, theories as to why amicus briefs may be effective. The first, the affected groups hypothesis, suggests amicus briefs are influential because they signal to the Court how many groups and individuals will be potentially affected by the decision. The second, the information hypothesis, proposes that amicus briefs are effective because they provide the Court with added information that buttresses the arguments of the direct parties. When subjected to empirical verification the results indicate that, not only does amicus participation increase litigation success, but also that this influence may be best explained by the information hypothesis.

Variable Voting Behavior on the Supreme Court: A Preliminary Analysis and Research Framework.  2004.  Justice System Journal 25(1): 57-74.

Though the Supreme Court rarely overrules itself, when it does, justices who vote to overrule violate both a legal norm and, for a nontrivial number of justices, an empirical regularity. First, in voting to overrule, justices defy the doctrine of stare decisis, their duty to follow the Court’s precedents. Second, in almost 30 percent of such rulings, justices who voted to establish precedents subsequently vote to overrule the very precedents they helped establish, thus breaking from the expectations of the attitudinal model. In this note, I describe the justices’ behavior in precedent-overruling cases during the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts. In addition, I develop a research framework to aid in understanding this variable behavior on the part of the justices. A number of relevant research questions are considered. Does ideology affect the decision to support a precedent and subsequently vote to overrule it? Are majority opinion authors less likely to exhibit such variable behavior than other members of the majority coalition? Is the decision to concur evidence of weak preferences for precedents? Are freshman justices more likely to exhibit unstable voting behavior in precedential cases as compared to their more senior counterparts? I address these questions as I examine the unique circumstances in which justices who participated in precedent-setting cases had the opportunity to reconsider their votes in precedent-overruling cases.

Recent Conference Papers

Going Public On Supreme Court Decisions. With Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha. 2013. Paper Presented at the 109th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, August 29-September 1.

Although scholars have long studied why presidents “go public” on a host of topics, no research has specifically investigated presidential statements about Supreme Court cases. To examine this significant issue, we have cataloged the number of times presidents have commented publicly on Supreme Court cases from the Eisenhower to Obama administrations. We posit that presidents discuss judicial decisions primarily to assist in their pursuit of policy and reelection goals, and to enhance their historical legacy.  Our empirical findings lend support to our expectations, revealing that reelection years, media attention to the Court’s decisions, and partisanship shape the volume of monthly presidential remarks on Supreme Court cases. Taken as a whole, this research contributes to our understanding of presidential speechmaking, executive-judicial branch interactions, and the methods presidents use to implement Supreme Court decisions.    

The Influence of Amicus Curiae Briefs on U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Content. With Pamela C. Corley and Jesse Hamner. 2013. Paper Presented at the 109th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, August 29-September 1.

Scholars have dedicated substantial research efforts to investigating whether interest group amicus curiae briefs influence the behavior of Supreme Court justices. Despite this, there has been little systematic attention devoted to exploring what is arguably the most important aspect of the Court’s policy outputs – its majority opinions. We remedy this state of affairs by using plagiarism detection software to assess the ability of amicus briefs to shape the content of judicial opinions. Our findings indicate that the justices incorporate language from amicus briefs into their opinions based primarily on the extent to which amicus briefs contribute to their ability to make effective law and policy. These results add fresh insight into how interest groups influence the development of federal law by the Supreme Court. 

The Institutionalization of Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings. With Lori A. Ringhand. 2013. Paper Presented at the 71st Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, April 11-14.

In 1816, the Senate created the Committee on the Judiciary to assist in its task of providing the president with advice and consent regarding appointments to the federal courts. Over the past two centuries, the work of this committee has evolved in substantial ways. This paper uses an original database of confirmation hearing dialogue to examine how the Committee’s role in Supreme Court confirmations has changed over time and to explore the motivations for those changes. To do this, we investigate a variety of developments, including the introduction of nominee testimony, opening the hearings to the public, changes in the rigor with which nominees are scrutinized, and the equalization of hearing questioning between majority and minority party senators. This research demonstrates that institutional change is motivated by both legitimizing and instrumental factors. 

Me Too? An Investigation of Repetition in U.S. Supreme Court Amicus Curiae Briefs. With Pamela C. Corley and Jesse Hamner. 2013. Paper Presented at the 71st Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, April 11-14.

Academics, practitioners, and judges have debated for decades the extent to which amicus curiae briefs provide novel information or repeat arguments already available to courts. Despite the importance of this question for our understanding of the role and influence of interest groups in the judiciary, there has been little systematic research addressing this issue. Using plagiarism detection software, we compare the content of U.S Supreme Court amicus briefs to that of lower court opinions, litigant briefs, and other amicus briefs. We find that amicus briefs seldom contain language that is repetitious of other information sources, indicating that amicus briefs overwhelmingly provide justices with original argumentation. These findings strongly support the informational value of interest group amici curiae in Supreme Court litigation.

Super Precedents, Litmus Tests, and Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings.  With Lori A. Ringhand. 2012. Paper Presented at the 70th Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, April 12-15.

We explore the discussion of precedent at Supreme Court confirmation hearings as a means to demonstrate how the hearings represent the opportunity to construct a democratically accepted set of constitutional commitments capable of changing over time. Employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, we investigate the precedents addressed at the hearings and how the treatment of these cases changes as new issues gain constitutional salience with the public. In addition, we use the discussion of precedents at the hearings to illustrate how the Court’s prior decisions are affirmed or rejected by Senators and nominees. In doing so, we pay particular attention to those precedents and issue areas that have become confirmation litmus tests that nominees are expected to embrace or renounce in order to secure confirmation. We conclude that, far from being empty rituals, the confirmation hearings are prized opportunities for vigorous and effective democratic debates about constitutional meaning.

Strategy, Certainty, and the Decision to Dissent on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. With Bethany Blackstone. 2011. Paper Presented at the 69th Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, March 31-April 3.

While there has been a substantial amount of research on the strategic behavior of political actors, the literature is rife with conflicting findings. We contribute to this debate by examining whether U.S. court of appeals judges dissent for the purpose of inviting en banc and/or Supreme Court review. We dissect aspects of modeling strategic behavior, particularly relating to problems of multicollinearity. We explore these issues by examining the dissenting behavior of court of appeals judges from 1970-2002. Our findings indicate that court of appeals judges strategically dissent, but this behavior is seldom captured by traditional quantitative approaches to modeling judicial behavior. Though our focus is on court of appeals judges, we are confident our conclusions can inform studies of strategic behavior in a variety of political contexts.

Judges and Friends: The Influence of Amici Curiae on U.S. Court of Appeals Judges. With Wendy L. Martinek. 2011. Paper Presented at the 69th Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, March 31-April 3.

We contribute to the literatures on political psychology, interest groups, and judicial decision making by examining whether ideology mediates the effect of amicus curiae briefs on decision making in the U.S. courts of appeals. We argue that amicus briefs provide judges with information that influences their voting behavior. Using a dataset specifically collected for this project, we find that amicus briefs influence the decision making of appeals court judges, contingent on a judge’s ideology. Liberal amicus briefs increase the chances that moderately conservative and conservative judges will cast a liberal vote. Conservative amicus briefs enhance the probability that moderate judges and conservative judges will cast a conservative vote. We conclude that this form of interest group lobbying influences judicial decision making and that understanding the efficacy of this strategy requires an appreciation of how political actors process persuasive information.

Public Opinion, Precedents, and Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings. With Lori A. Ringhand. 2011. Paper Presented at the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, January 6-8.

We argue that the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings of Supreme Court nominees act as a mechanism by which the public, through its representatives on the Committee, shapes, debates, and changes constitutional meaning. To evaluate this perspective, we investigate the extent to which the issues addressed at the hearings track both public opinion and Supreme Court precedents from 1955-2006. In so doing, we contribute to two literatures. First, we expand on our knowledge of how public opinion is communicated to the justices by analyzing the extent to which the issues raised at hearings reflect the salient political topics of the day. Second, we advance our understanding of the impact of Court decisions by exploring how recent Supreme Court precedents influence the dialogue at confirmation hearings. Our results indicate that both public opinion and Supreme Court precedents play an important role in shaping the dialogue at confirmation hearings, highlighting the roles of the citizenry and the Supreme Court in directing the future of constitutional change.

Amicus Participation in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. With Wendy L. Martinek. 2010. Paper Presented at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia, January 7-9.

Though we know a great deal about amici curiae in the U.S. Supreme Court – who participates, why they participate, the nature of their arguments, and if their participation matters for case outcomes – we know very little about amici curiae in the U.S. courts of appeals. In this paper, we investigate the nature of group participation in court of appeals cases using data from the Update to the U.S. Courts of Appeals Database (1997-2002), supplemented with extensive original data collection. We pay particular attention to the types of groups that participate, allowing us to shed new light on the plural versus elite nature of interest group participation in these courts. Our results indicate that a diverse assortment of interest groups utilize the amicus curiae brief in pursuit of their legal and political goals in the courts of appeals, indicating that organizational participation in these significant policymaking venues is most consistent with pluralist perspectives on organizational activity.

Lower Court Influence on U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Content. With Bryan Calvin and Pamela C. Corley. 2009. Paper Presented at the 67th Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, April 2-5.

Despite the importance of Supreme Court opinions for the American polity, scholars have dedicated little systematic research to investigating the factors that contribute to the content of the Court’s opinions. In this paper, we examine the ability of lower federal courts to shape the content of Supreme Court opinions. We argue that lower court opinions will influence the content of the Court’s opinions based on a number of factors, including the prestige of the lower court opinion author, the published or unpublished nature of the lower court opinion, the ideological compatibility of the lower court opinion vis-a-vis the Supreme Court’s decision, the type of lower court opinion, and the lower court from which the opinion emanated. Utilizing plagiarism detection software to compare lower federal court opinions with the majority opinions of the Supreme Court during the 2002-2004 terms, we uncover support for our hypotheses, indicating that the Supreme Court systematically incorporates language from the lower federal courts into its majority opinions.

On the Relationship between Public Opinion and Decision Making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. With Bryan Calvin and Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha. 2009. Paper Presented at the 80th Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, January 8-10.

The potentially undemocratic nature of the federal courts has longed flamed the fires of the debate regarding the proper role of the judiciary in American politics. Extant scholarship concerning the influence of public opinion on judicial decision making focuses almost myopically on the U.S. Supreme Court, neglecting other significant judicial actors. We explore the extent to which the federal courts act as countermajoritarian institutions by investigating the impact of public preferences on decision making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Using data from 1961-2002, we examine whether the courts of appeals are influenced by public mood, both indirectly through the federal judicial selection process and directly via responsiveness to changes in circuit and national mood. Our results indicate that public opinion affects courts of appeals decision making indirectly by way of judicial replacements, but we fail to uncover evidence that courts of appeals judges respond directly to changes in public opinion at either the regional or national levels. We conclude that, absent membership turnover, the courts of appeals are not responsive to the will of the public.

Friends of the Circuits: Interest Group Influence on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. With Wendy L. Martinek. 2008. Paper Presented at the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, Massachusetts, August 28-31.

Though there is an extensive literature focused on the participation and efficacy of amici curiae in the U.S. Supreme Court, there is exceedingly little rigorous analysis of amici curiae in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. This deficit is troubling in several regards, including the fact that much more amicus activity occurs in the latter than in the former. In this paper, we contribute to the amelioration of this deficiency by systematically analyzing the influence of amicus curiae briefs on U.S. Court of Appeals decision making using Kuersten and Haire’s (2007) Update to the Appeals Court Data Base (1997-2002) in conjunction with data gathered from Westlaw and PACER. Our empirical analysis reveals that amicus briefs filed in support of the appellant enhance the likelihood of that litigant’s probability of success but that amicus briefs filed in support of the appellee have no effect on litigation outcomes. We conclude that amici can help level the playing field between appellants and appellees by serving to counter the propensity to affirm in the U.S. Courts of Appeals.

Cognitive Dissonance on the U.S. Supreme Court. 2008. Paper Presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, April 3-6.

This research examines the applicability of cognitive dissonance theory to explain a judge’s decision to author or join a separate opinion. I propose that, following a counter-attitudinal vote, a judge will endeavor to reduce the aversive consequences of being viewed as an inconsistent decision maker by justifying his or her attitudinally incongruent vote choice to the public in a separate opinion. I test this possibility by examining U.S. Supreme Court justices’ decisions to author or join concurring and dissenting opinions during the 1946-2001 terms. The empirical results provide qualified support for the use of separate opinions as dissonance reduction mechanisms, suggesting that dissonance theory is both applicable to the actions of elite decision makers and enjoys validity outside of a laboratory setting.

Counteractive Lobbying in the U.S. Supreme Court. With Lisa A. Solowiej. 2008. Paper Presented at the 79th Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, January 10-12.

Theories of counteractive lobbying assert that interest groups lobby for the purpose of neutralizing the advocacy efforts of their opponents. We examine the applicability of counteractive lobbying to explain interest group amicus curiae participation in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions on the merits. Testing the counteractive lobbying hypotheses from 1953-2001, we provide strong support for the contention that interest groups engage in counteractive lobbying in the nation’s highest court. Our findings indicate that, like the elected branches of government, the Supreme Court is properly viewed as a battleground for public policy in which organized interests clash in their attempts to etch their policy preferences into law.

Selecting Influence? The Solicitor General and the Supreme Court. With Chris Nicholson. 2007. Paper Presented at the 65th Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, April 12-15.

Scholars have devoted a great deal of research to investigating the role and influence of the U.S. Solicitor General (SG) as amicus curiae in the Supreme Court. Yet, we know little about the SG’s decision to file an amicus brief and how this relates to the SG’s success on the merits. We fill this void by examining legal, political, and administrative factors that affect the SG’s decision to participate as amicus curiae. We subject our hypotheses to empirical testing utilizing data on the 1953-1999 Supreme Court terms by linking the SG’s decision to file an amicus brief to the SG’s ultimate success on the merits, employing a Heckman-style selection model. We find that the SG’s decision to file an amicus brief, and the SG’s success on the merits, is influenced by legal, political, and administrative considerations, suggesting that the SG is best viewed through the incorporation of a variety of theoretical perspectives.

The Small Group Context: Designated District Court Judges in the United States Courts of Appeals. With Wendy L. Martinek. 2007. Paper Presented at the 78th Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, January 3-6.

Decision making in the United States Courts of Appeals occurs primarily in three-judge panels with rotating membership. A substantial proportion of court of appeals cases is decided by panels that include a judge who is not a regular court of appeals jurist but is, instead, a district court judge serving temporarily on the court of appeals bench. Taken together, these two traits mean that court of appeals decision making is often a function of small groups with temporary members. In this paper, we set out to examine whether designated district court judges behave differently than their court of appeals colleagues with whom they render decisions. And, in doing so, we suggest a profitable direction for theory building vis-à-vis judicial behavior. Our analysis of data contained in the United States Courts of Appeals Database indicates that the votes of judges on three-judge panels are influenced by the preferences of their fellow panelists and that variance in the ideological direction of votes cast is not systematically related to status as a designated district court judge, with such judges manifesting greater variance in their ideological decision making.

Towards an Integrated Model of the Supreme Court’s Federalism Decision Making. 2006. Paper Presented at the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, August 31-September 3.

Disputes involving the boundaries of state versus federal power make up a substantial portion of the Supreme Court’s docket and have undergone extensive analysis. Yet, the conventional wisdom regarding the justices’ choices in these cases is that they are highly inconsistent. I argue that this is primarily a function of the failure of scholars to develop a comprehensive model of the justices’ federalism decision making. To remedy this, I introduce an integrated model of the individual justices’ choices in these cases, which is then subjected to empirical testing in the Rehnquist Court era (1986-2004). I explore a host of determinants of the justices’ decision making, including attitudinal, institutional, legal, and personal attributes, as well as the role of organized interests in the Court. The findings reveal that the choices justices make in these cases are not as discordant as most commentators suggest. Rather, they are relatively predictable through the application of an integrated model of judicial choice.

Interest Group Influence on the Supreme Court: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations.  2006. Paper Presented at the 77th Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia, January 5-7.

Despite that fact that amicus curiae participation is the most common method of interest group activity in the judicial arena, there is little consensus as to whether this means of participation influences the decision making of the U.S. Supreme Court.  To redress this state of affairs, this research investigates the affect of amicus briefs on the ideological direction of the Court’s decisions, with particular attention given to theoretical and methodological issues that have gone unexplored in previous studies.  Analyzing group influence during the 1946-1995 terms, the results provide particularly robust evidence that pressure groups are effective in shaping the Court’s policy outputs.  These findings therefore indicate that elite decision makers can be influenced by persuasive argumentation presented by organized interests. 

The Consistency of Judicial Choice.  2005. Paper Presented at the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., September 1-4.

Despite the fact that judicial scholars have developed reasonably well-specified models of the voting behavior of U.S. Supreme Court justices, little attention has been paid to influences on the consistency of the choices justices make.  Aside from the methodological problems associated with failure to account for heteroskedasticity with regard to the justices’ voting behavior, I argue that variance in judicial choice is also of theoretical import.  Simply put, by uncovering influences on the stability of judicial choice, a more complete understanding of judicial decision making is provided.  I explore this possibility by developing a theoretical framework that uncovers influences on the consistency of judicial choice which are then subjected to empirical validation.  I show that the stability of judicial decision making is affected by attitudinal and strategic factors, as well as the Court’s informational environment.

Mobilizing Dissensus on the U.S. Supreme Court.  2005. Paper Presented at the 59th Annual Meeting of the New York State Political Science Association, Niagara, New York, April 15-16.

Prior to the 1940s, U.S. Supreme Court justices rarely exhibited nonconsensual behavior.  However, over the last 60 years, the number of dissenting and concurring opinions has risen dramatically.  While a great deal of empirical research has focused on explaining this phenomenon, little attention has been paid to the role of organized interests in contributing to a justice’s decision to write separately.  I argue that a justice’s decision to write or join a separate opinion is a partial function of interest group amicus curiae participation in the Court.  By providing the justices with a myriad of information regarding how cases should be resolved, organized interests create ambiguity with regard to the correct application of the law in a case, at the same time providing the justices with a substantial foundation for a concurring or dissenting opinion.  I subject this argument to empirical validation by examining the justices’ decisions to author or join regular concurring, special concurring, and dissenting opinions during the 1946-2000 terms.  The results indicate that organized interests play a significant role in mobilizing dissensus on the Supreme Court.

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