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Supreme Court Decisions And The Attitudinal Model

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1. The Supreme Court decisions in a case affect significantly the entire country’s legal system. Therefore, models of judicial decision making were created to explain the Supreme Court’s behavior and how they influence policies. While the legal, attitudinal and the strategic model are not the only theories of judicial decision making, those constitute the most prevalent hypotheses to explain judicial decisions.
In the legal model, judges’ decisions are based on the neutral application of the law, facts, and precedents. In this model, judges must leave their personal preferences away and shape their decisions according to their legal training, principles of logic and constitutional understanding. In a legal model, judges desire just to employ …show more content…
In this model, judges act purely according to their own viewpoints, beliefs and preferences regardless of their court coworker’s reaction and response. For this reasons, this model of judicial behavior seems to lack theoretical consistency and reasoning. Judges’ policy preferences have a significant and possibly larger role in the judicial decisions making process (Ivers). Thus, legal considerations are also relevant in this process and cannot be ignored due to the fact that judges make decisions inside a legal framework.
In the strategic model, judges’ decisions based on how they believe decisions will influence the audience’s interests. In this model, judges take into consideration their colleagues’ potential decisions and public responses (Cross). This model promotes consistency and offers a more comprehensive and intelligible framework for the examination of judicial attitude and for that reasons it has become significantly …show more content…
"United Steelworkers vs. Weber: Affirmative Action on Trial." Southern Changes 1979 ser. 1.9. Web.

Voeten, Erik. "How the Supreme Court Responds to Public Opinion." The Washington Monthly. 28 June 2013. Web. 15 Apr. 2016.

Ivers, Gregg. Models Of Judicial Decision-Making. n.p.: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.

Cross, Frank B. "Decisionmaking in the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals." California Law Review 2003: 1457. JSTOR Journals. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.

Danette, Brickman, and Peterson David A. M. "Public Opinion Reaction to Repeated Events: Citizen Response to Multiple Supreme Court Abortion Decisions." Political Behavior 2006: 87. JSTOR Journals. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.

"Rethinking Weber: The Business Response To Affirmative Action." Harvard Law Review 102.3 (1989): 658. Business Source Complete. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.

Rutherglen, George. "Private Rights And Private Actions: The Legacy Of Civil Rights In The Enforcement Of Title Vii." Boston University Law Review 95.3 (2015): 733-757. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Apr.

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