Prominent scholars argue that the Supreme Court justices vote insincerely and in favor of the majority at the conference vote in order to obtain either damage control over the content of the majority opinion or to conform to the majority. Those justices who cast their vote late in the order of voting at the conference are in a better position to behave this way because they are more likely to know which side will win. Using Spaeth’s Burger Court dataset we examine whether there is a statistical association between the order of voting of the justices and the extent to which they joined the winning coalition at the conference vote. We find little evidence of such an association using either bivariate or multivariate techniques and conclude that such behavior is exceedingly rare.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Baum, Lawrence. 1988. “Measuring Policy Change in the U.S. Supreme Court.”American Political Science Review82: 905-912.
2.
Baum, Lawrence. 1991. “Membership Change and Collective Voting in the United States Supreme Court.”Journal of Politics54: 3-24.
3.
Baum, Lawrence. 1997. The Puzzle of Judicial Behavior. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
Biskupic, Joan, and Elder Witt. 1997. Congressional Quarterly Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court, 3rd ed.Washington, DC: CQ Press.
6.
Brenner, Saul, and Theodore S. Arrington. 2001. “Ideological Voting on the U.S. Supreme Court: Comparing the Conference Vote and the Final Vote with the Segal/Cover Scores.”Jurimetrics41: 505-512.
7.
Brenner, Saul, and Theodore S. Arrington. 2002. “Measuring Salience on the Supreme Court: A Research Note.”Jurimetrics43: 99-113.
8.
Brenner, Saul, and Eric S. Heberlig. 2002. “Comparing the Unanimous with the Nonunanimous Decisions on the U.S. Supreme Court, 1954-1985.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston.
9.
Dickson, Del. 2001. The Supreme Court in Conference (1940-1985): The Private Discussion Behind Nearly 300 Supreme Court Decisions. New York: Oxford University Press.
10.
Epstein, Lee, and Jack Knight. 1995. “Documenting Strategic Interaction on the U.S. Supreme Court.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago.
11.
Epstein, Lee, and Jeffrey A. Segal. 2000. “Measuring Issue Salience”American Journal of Political Science44: 66-81.
12.
Epstein, Lee, Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Thomas G. Walker, 2003. The Supreme Court Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.
13.
George, Tracey E., and Lee Epstein. 1992. “On the Nature of Supreme Court Decision Making.”American Political Science Review86: 323-337.
14.
Hammond, Thomas H., Chris W. Bonneau, and Reginald S. Sheehan. 1999. “Toward a Rational Choice Spatial Model of Supreme Court Decision-Making: Making Sense of Certiorari, the Original Vote on the Merits, Opinion Assignment, Coalition Formation and Maintenance, and the Final Vote on the Choice of Legal Doctrine.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta.
15.
Johnson, Timothy M., James F. Spriggs II, and Paul J. Wahlbeck. 2002. “Passing and Strategic Voting on the U.S. Supreme Court.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston.
16.
Maltzman, Forrest, James F. Spriggs II, and Paul J. Wahlbeck. 2000. Crafting Law on the Supreme Court. New York: Cambridge University Press.
17.
O’Brien, David. 2000. Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics, 6th ed.New York: Norton.
18.
Randazzo, Kirk A., and Reginald S. Sheehan. 1999. “Voting Fluidity on the Vinson and Warren Courts: Who Does it and Why?” Paper presented at the 1999 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta.
19.
Randazzo, Kirk A., Reginald S. Sheehan, Kenneth C. Williams, and Steve Haptonstahl. 2002. “Strategic and Sequential Voting During the Burger Court.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago.
20.
Segal, Jeffrey A.1984. “Predicting Supreme Court Cases Probabilistically: The Search and Seizure Cases, 1962-1981.”American Political Science Review78: 891-900.
21.
Segal, Jeffrey A., and Albert Cover. 1989. “Ideological Values and the Votes of Supreme Court Justices.”American Political Science Review83: 557-565.
22.
Segal, Jeffrey A. and Cheryl D. Reedy. 1988. “The Supreme Court and Sex Discrimination: The Role of the Solicitor General.”Western Political Quarterly41: 553-568.
23.
Segal, Jeffrey A., and Harold J. Spaeth. 2002. The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited. New York: Cambridge University Press.
24.
Spaeth, Harold J.2002. The Burger Court Judicial Database: 1969-1985 Terms. East Lansing: Michigan State University.
25.
Wahlbeck, Paul James F. Spriggs II, and Forrest Maltzman. 1998. “Marshalling the Court: Bargaining and Accommodation on the United States Supreme Court.”American Journal of Political Science42: 294-315.
26.
Westerland, Chad. 2003. “Who Owns the Majority Opinion? An Examination of Policy Making on the U.S. Supreme Court.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia.
