Looking At Supreme Court Impact in Context

Abstract

The field of judicial impact research has been aptly described as atheoretical. But recently a framework has been proposed for organizing this research and for giving direction to future research efforts in this area. As this insightful framework suggests, investigations concerning the indirect policy consequences of court decisions are best seen as rooted not only in earlier judicial impact studies but also in previous research in the particular policy arena of interest. In this article, this insight is employed in an attempt to explain the well-documented state-to-state variation in the impact on state spending of the Supreme Court reapportionment decisions of the 1960s. Using the states as units of analysis, multiple regression analysis is used to explain the extent of impact on two areas of state government spending: aid to local education and public welfare. The same multiple regression equation is found to fit both areas of reapportionment impact surprisingly well.