IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v122y2005i3p483-499.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Supreme Court consensus and dissent: Estimating the role of the selection screen

Author

Listed:
  • Brian Goff

Abstract

From 1940 to the present, the on-the-record consensus among Supreme Court justices fell precipitously relative to historical benchmarks. This paper first shows that Court consensus is closely associated with measures of consistency and stability of Court rulings. Then, an empirical model of Supreme Court consensus and dissension is estimated over 1800–2001 in which characteristics of the presidential-senatorial screen are key variables. Using OLS and controlling for several other influences, the results show that variations in consensus are linked to two components of the selection screen – the party of the confirming Senate and split party nominations and confirmations. Other than the selection screen, the size of the federal judiciary and consensus norms in the recent past are important influences. These results are also confirmed using GARCH and regime-shifting econometric methods. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2005

Suggested Citation

  • Brian Goff, 2005. "Supreme Court consensus and dissent: Estimating the role of the selection screen," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 483-499, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:122:y:2005:i:3:p:483-499
    DOI: 10.1007/s11127-005-7517-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11127-005-7517-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11127-005-7517-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Baum, Lawrence, 1988. "Measuring Policy Change in the U.S. Supreme Court," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 82(3), pages 905-920, September.
    2. Landes, William M & Posner, Richard A, 1975. "The Independent Judiciary in an Interest-Group Perspective," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(3), pages 875-901, December.
    3. Toma, Eugenia Froedge, 1991. "Congressional Influence and the Supreme Court: The Budget as a Signaling Device," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(1), pages 131-146, January.
    4. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 1998. "Estimating and Testing Linear Models with Multiple Structural Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(1), pages 47-78, January.
    5. Spiller, Pablo T & Spitzer, Matthew L, 1992. "Judicial Choice of Legal Doctrines," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 8(1), pages 8-46, March.
    6. Robert J. Barro, 1998. "Determinants of Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Empirical Study," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262522543, April.
    7. Robert F. Engle & Aaron D. Smith, 1999. "Stochastic Permanent Breaks," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 553-574, November.
    8. Nelson, Daniel B, 1991. "Conditional Heteroskedasticity in Asset Returns: A New Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(2), pages 347-370, March.
    9. Gely, Rafael & Spiller, Pablo T., 1992. "The political economy of supreme court constitutional decisions: The case of Roosevelt's court-packing plan," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 45-67, March.
    10. Segal, Jeffrey A. & Cover, Albert D., 1989. "Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(2), pages 557-565, June.
    11. de Figueiredo, John M & Tiller, Emerson H, 1996. "Congressional Control of the Courts: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Expansion of the Federal Judiciary," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(2), pages 435-462, October.
    12. Ferejohn, John A. & Weingast, Barry R., 1992. "A positive theory of statutory interpretation," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 263-279, June.
    13. Clements, Michael P & Hendry, David F, 1996. "Intercept Corrections and Structural Change," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(5), pages 475-494, Sept.-Oct.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Julio López-Laborda & Fernando Rodrigo & Eduardo Sanz-Arcega, 2019. "Consensus and dissent in the resolution of conflicts of competence by the Spanish Constitutional Court: the role of federalism and ideology," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 305-330, December.
    2. Paul H. Edelman & David E. Klein & Stefanie A. Lindquist, 2012. "Consensus, Disorder, and Ideology on the Supreme Court," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 9(1), pages 129-148, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brian Goff, 2006. "Supreme Court consensus and dissent: Estimating the role of the selection screen," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 127(3), pages 367-383, June.
    2. Bernardo Guimaraes & Bruno Meyerhof Salama, 2023. "Permitting Prohibitions," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(1), pages 241-271.
    3. Guimaraesy, Bernardo & Meyerhof Salama, Bruno, 2017. "Contingent judicial deference: theory and application to usury laws," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86146, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Guimarães, Bernardo de Vasconcellos & Salama, Bruno Meyerhof, 2017. "Contingent judicial deference: theory and application to usury laws," Textos para discussão 440, FGV EESP - Escola de Economia de São Paulo, Fundação Getulio Vargas (Brazil).
    5. Pablo T. Spiller & Rafael Gely, 2007. "Strategic Judicial Decision Making," NBER Working Papers 13321, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. George Tridimas, 2010. "Constitutional judicial review and political insurance," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 81-101, February.
    7. Aaron Smith, 2005. "Forecasting in the presence of level shifts," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(8), pages 557-574.
    8. Rossi, Barbara, 2013. "Advances in Forecasting under Instability," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1203-1324, Elsevier.
    9. Lars P. Feld & Stefan Voigt, 2004. "Making Judges Independent – Some Proposals Regarding the Judiciary," CESifo Working Paper Series 1260, CESifo.
    10. Gabriel Rodríguez & Roxana Tramontana Tocto, 2015. "Application of a Short Memory Model With Random Level Shifts to the Volatility of Latin American Stock Market Returns," Latin American Journal of Economics-formerly Cuadernos de Economía, Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile., vol. 52(2), pages 185-211, November.
    11. Matthew C. Stephenson, 2003. "“When the Devil Turns … ”: The Political Foundations of Independent Judicial Review," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 59-89, January.
    12. Moser, Peter, 1999. "The impact of legislative institutions on public policy: a survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 1-33, March.
    13. Fiorino, Nadia & Gavoille, Nicolas & Padovano, Fabio, 2015. "Rewarding judicial independence: Evidence from the Italian Constitutional Court," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 56-66.
    14. J. Mark Ramseyer & Eric B. Rasmusen, 2001. "When are Judges and Bureaucrats Left Independent? Theory and History from Imperial Japan, Postwar Japan, and the United States," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-126, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    15. Toma, Eugenia F., 1996. "A contractual model of the voting behavior of the supreme court: The role of the chief justice," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 433-447, December.
    16. Stefan Voigt, 1999. "Implicit Consitutional Change-Changing the Meaning of the Constitution Without Changing the Text of the Document," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 197-224, May.
    17. Martin van Hees & Bernard Steunenberg, 2000. "The Choices Judges Make," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 12(3), pages 305-323, July.
    18. Álvaro Bustos & Nuno Garoupa, 2020. "An Integrated Theory of Litigation and Legal Standards," Documentos de Trabajo 536, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    19. Michele Santoni & Francesco Zucchini, 2006. "Legislative output and the Constitutional Court in Italy," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 165-187, September.
    20. Pushkar Maitra & Russell Smyth, 2004. "Judicial Independence, Judicial Promotion and the Enforcement of Legislative Wealth Transfers—An Empirical Study of the New Zealand High Court," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 209-235, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:122:y:2005:i:3:p:483-499. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.