CAREER: Multiple Actors, Competing Risks: State Supreme Court Justices and the Policy Making (Unmaking) Game of Judicial Review

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This project explores the question of whether American state supreme court justices vote strategically or sincerely. The study will investigate, in particular, the agenda-setting stage and the decision-on-the-merits stage of judicial review. Several hypotheses will be tested: 1) whether institutional rules that make retaliation more likely affects judges' likelihood of voting strategically; 2) whether strategic behavior varies in response to changes in federal-state relations and across areas of law with varying degrees of saliency; and 3) whether competing risks for judges are created by multiple actors who pose electoral and policy threats to state supreme court justices. Cases from eleven years of state supreme court decisions will be collected in four areas of judicial review cases (campaign and elections, workers' compensation, unemployment compensation, and welfare). Data also will be collected on judge biographical characteristics, state elite and citizen ideology, as well as institutional rules, constitutional designs, and other state and court characteristics for each year during the 1994-2004 period. In addition to these data, interviews will be conducted with state supreme court justices, members of the legislature, and the state governor in twelve American states with variation across institutional rules, formalized legislative-judicial relations, and political contexts.