The Constraining Capacity of Law on the U.S. Supreme Court

George Washington University, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

Does legal doctrine genuinely constrain the choices Supreme Court justices make? Do justices' ideological preferences dominate their decisions? The "law versus ideology" debate provides conflicting answers to these questions. What is missing is a fuller accounting of the capacity of legal doctrine to constrain justices from acting on the basis of their ideological preferences. The current project aspires to provide a comprehensive theoretical and empirical examination of legal doctrine's impact on judicial decision making. Depending on how presumptive legal doctrine is of an outcome, some legal rules and standards may constrain ideological discretion, while others may actually enhance such discretion. The current research tests competing models and hypotheses regarding how variation in the presumptiveness of legal doctrine influences ideological discretion and hence the degree of ideological voting. The project will examine justices' voting behavior in a large number of cases within multiple legal issue areas spanning the prior sixty years. The data will be analyzed using multi-level statistical models. The findings of this research will facilitate a richer understanding of judging. More broadly, the insights regarding how and when the "rules of the game" constrain political actors are informative in better conceptualizing the role of courts in the democratic process.