Party, Policy, or Duty: Why Does the Supreme Court Invalidate Federal Statutes? (original) (raw)
Related papers
Ideology and Judicial Deference in the D.C. Circuit
Southeastern Political Review
This article examines the published opinions of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit-a key judicial forum for deciding administrative law appeals-to test the hypothesis that ideology is a principal element for understanding judicial control over federal agencies between I970 and 1995. Prior studies focus on U.S. Supreme Court rulings imply, but do not directly test. the proposition that judicial deference to agencies is the product of an interactive relationship between key political variables. Using a non-additive, "integrated" model ofjudicial behavior, the study confirms that judicial deference is an interactive ideological decision where the court's decision to defer is conditioned upon an interaction between the panel's composition and agency policy. Ideology, though, is not the sole explanation for court behavior since other non-ideological variables contribute to deference as well. The D.C. Circuit is constrained, and defers less, by the "hard look" doctrine and landmark U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Even so, it defers more to agency rulemaking, making the rvpe of agency proceeding at issue an important variable.
Congressional Attacks on the Supreme Court: A Mechanism to Maintain, Build, and Consolidate
Law and Social Inquiry
Reexamination and reinterpretation of the “mature” (1962–1980) New Deal era of congressional attacks on the Supreme Court reveals a new hypothesis: that court-curbing efforts played a previously unrecognized role in party system development. Court rulings that create inter- and intra-party tension provide opportunities for various actors to attack the Court in an effort to solidify their faction’s standing within national coalitional politics. Congressional attackers can use court-curbing resolutions and amendments in efforts to help them maintain coalitional cohesion, build a new majority, or consolidate previous victories. Thus, we might see legislative-judicial relations as an unrecognized “site” of political development where coalitional change is opposed and wrought.
New York University law review (1950)
The article examines whether the ideological divisions on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit are affected by changes in the composition of political branches: the two houses of Congress and the Presidency. Thus, it seeks to empirically test the plausibility of positive political economy models of adjudication, which posit that judges act in an ideologically "strategic" manner. The data set developed for this study consists of all cases decided by the D.C. Circuit, between 1970 and 1996, challenging the health-and-safety decisions of twenty federal agencies. The empirical analysis undertaken here reveals strong, statistically significant evidence of ideological voting. Most strikingly, challengers seeking more stringent health-and-safety regulation prevailed in 50.3% of the cases before majority-Democratic panels but in only 27.8% of the cases before majority-Republican panels. This difference is significant at a 99% confidence level. Th...
Judicial Review by the Burger and Rehnquist Courts
Political Research Quarterly, 2007
In this article, the authors assess various influences on U.S. Supreme Court justices' behavior in cases involving judicial review of federal, state, and local statutes. Focusing on challenges to the constitutionality of statutes considered by the Burger and Rehnquist Courts during the 1969 to 2000 terms, the authors evaluate the impact of attitudinal, institutional, and contextual variables on individual justices' votes to strike or uphold statutes challenged before the Court. The authors find that the justices' ideological responses to the challenged statutes, the extent of amicus support for the statute, the support of the solicitor general, congressional preferences, and the existence of a civil liberties challenge to the statute are all significantly related to the justices' votes to invalidate or uphold statutes. They also find that in the Rehnquist Court, conservative justices are less likely to strike state statutes but more likely to strike federal laws than...
Invitations to override: Congressional reversals of supreme court decisions
International Review of Law and Economics, 1996
I. Introduction Between 1967 and 1991 Congress overrode 121 Supreme Court statutory decisions,' a relatively small percentage of all Supreme Court decisions during the period.' The small extent of Congressional reversals of Supreme Court decisions is consistent with recent positive political analyses of Supreme Court decision making, where it is emphasized that the Court makes its decisions in a way that insulates them from legislative override.' The Court, for example, may make a decision that takes advantage of the legislative decision-making process (such as bicameralism, constitutional amendment process, or the committee system), which can insure against a legislative override. Congressional overrides, when they do occur, are explained as either "mistakes" on the 'W. Eskridge, Overriding Supreme Court Statutory Interpretation Decisions, 101 Yale LawJournal 331 (1991). %'e define a congressional override or reversal as a legislative action (statute) that purports to change a policy outcome from a case decided by the Supreme Court. 'Legal, economic, and political scholars are increasingly using the tools of positive political theory to analyze how political institutions influence and determine public policy. For recent conference volumes on the topic see, Conference, Regulating Regulation, 57(1&2)