This page contains replication datasets and do files from selected publications. These data are in Stata 10.0 format, compressed as Zip files. To request a different format, send an email to pmcollins"at"unt"dot"edu.
Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making. 2008. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Data and Do File.
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 Consistency of Judicial Choice. 2008. Journal of Politics 70(3): 861-873. Data and Do File.
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.
Amici Curiae and Dissensus on the U.S. Supreme Court. 2008. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 5(1): 143-170. Data and Do File.
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. Data and Do File.
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.
Towards an Integrated Model of the U.S. Supreme Court's Federalism Decision Making. 2007. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 37(4): 505-531. Data and Do File.
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. Data and Do File.
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. Data and Do File
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. Data and Do File
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.