In a collaborative research study called “Do Political Preferences Change? A Longitudinal Study of U.S. Supreme Court Justices,” the researchers (which I will refer to as Epstein et al.) looked into 16 different Supreme Court justices that served for 10 or more terms and started and ended their service in between 1937-1993. Based on two different models they charted out the Justice’s voting habits liberally or conservatively to see how they voted and if their votes changed over time or if there was a pattern associated with their term on the bench. The attitudinal model assumes that “justices are goal-directed actors who want case outcomes to reflect as closely as possible their particular policy preferences. (And that) they achieve their goal
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It talks about specific “legal doctrine” established through previous Supreme Court decisions that the lower courts should follow, regardless of their political and partisan leanings. However, as established by Epstein et al., and following the attitudinal model, the judges in the lower court will also vote according to their sincere preference. However, Cross and Tiller essentially say that for the lower courts, there is not very often a time when they can just follow their preferences. If their preferences are in line with the legal doctrine than there is no issue, but if their preferences do not match that of the legal doctrine than there is a number of things that could influence the court’s decision away from their political preferences. The biggest factor that Cross and Tiller discuss is the influential “whistleblower.” The whistleblower is typically a judge who has the minority preference, but whose preference is in line with the legal doctrine. This gives the minority opinion more weight than it would have under normal circumstances, because of the threat of calling out the majority for not following what has been established in the past and potentially getting them “in trouble” with the higher courts. This is a …show more content…
claimed to be purely an analysis of whether or not there was change happening, not a search for the reasons why, while Cross and Tiller looked at one of the potential reasoning’s that judges may change their political preferences particularly in the lower courts. Both however talked about a certain aspect that I believe plays an important role in any individual’s decision making process and that is ideology. In Segal and Cover’s essay “Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices,” they took a look at the 17 justices appointed to the Supreme Court starting with Earl Warren and ending with Anthony Kennedy. Instead of looking at their voting behavior during their time in office, like Epstein et al., they looked at their assumed ideological standing prior to their appointment to the Supreme Court. This was found via newspaper reports with both liberal and conservative leanings, as well as Senate hearings and personal testimony from the justices themselves. This was then placed on a scale and they were ranked according to the most liberal (in this case, Brennan, Fortas, and Marshall) and the most conservative. (Scalia) After determining their ideological standing, they predicted how they should vote according to different civil liberties cases that came up during their time as members of the Supreme Court and the results came out to be about 80% effective. However, a big chunk of that difference came from 2 of the 17 Justices whose voting behavior
It talks about specific “legal doctrine” established through previous Supreme Court decisions that the lower courts should follow, regardless of their political and partisan leanings. However, as established by Epstein et al., and following the attitudinal model, the judges in the lower court will also vote according to their sincere preference. However, Cross and Tiller essentially say that for the lower courts, there is not very often a time when they can just follow their preferences. If their preferences are in line with the legal doctrine than there is no issue, but if their preferences do not match that of the legal doctrine than there is a number of things that could influence the court’s decision away from their political preferences. The biggest factor that Cross and Tiller discuss is the influential “whistleblower.” The whistleblower is typically a judge who has the minority preference, but whose preference is in line with the legal doctrine. This gives the minority opinion more weight than it would have under normal circumstances, because of the threat of calling out the majority for not following what has been established in the past and potentially getting them “in trouble” with the higher courts. This is a …show more content…
claimed to be purely an analysis of whether or not there was change happening, not a search for the reasons why, while Cross and Tiller looked at one of the potential reasoning’s that judges may change their political preferences particularly in the lower courts. Both however talked about a certain aspect that I believe plays an important role in any individual’s decision making process and that is ideology. In Segal and Cover’s essay “Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices,” they took a look at the 17 justices appointed to the Supreme Court starting with Earl Warren and ending with Anthony Kennedy. Instead of looking at their voting behavior during their time in office, like Epstein et al., they looked at their assumed ideological standing prior to their appointment to the Supreme Court. This was found via newspaper reports with both liberal and conservative leanings, as well as Senate hearings and personal testimony from the justices themselves. This was then placed on a scale and they were ranked according to the most liberal (in this case, Brennan, Fortas, and Marshall) and the most conservative. (Scalia) After determining their ideological standing, they predicted how they should vote according to different civil liberties cases that came up during their time as members of the Supreme Court and the results came out to be about 80% effective. However, a big chunk of that difference came from 2 of the 17 Justices whose voting behavior