Agenda Setting and Case Selection on the U.S. Supreme Court

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Lane ◽  
Ryan C. Black
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Judicial Process ◽  
Fundamental Step ◽  
Case Selection ◽  
Setting Process ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Grant Review ◽  
The U.S

The Supreme Court’s docket consists of thousands of cases each term, with petitioners hoping at least four justices will be compelled to grant review to their case. The decision to move a case from their docket to their calendar for oral arguments and all intermediate steps is what is known as the agenda-setting process. This is a fundamental step in the judicial process, as the Supreme Court cannot establish precedent and affect policy change without first deciding to review.

Agenda-Setting on the U.S. Supreme Court

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan J. Owens ◽  
James Sieja
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The U.S

Understanding the conditions under which the Supreme Court sets its agenda is crucial to understanding Supreme Court behavior. After all, before the justices make any decision on the merits of a case, they must first decide whether to hear it at all. This chapter analyzes Supreme Court agenda-setting. It begins by describing the process justices employ to select cases to review. It examines how parties file certiorari petitions, the certiorari pool used to provide guidance to the justices, and the conferences in which justices vote to grant or deny review to cert petitions. The chapter then discusses four explanations political scientists have provided to explain the conditions under which justices set the agenda. The article concludes by examining limitations of existing scholarship and providing suggestions for future scholarship.

Measuring Policy Change in the U.S. Supreme Court

1988 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 905-920 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Baum
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Building Block ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Burger Court ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Warren Court ◽  
Measure Change ◽  
The U.S

Measuring the U.S. Supreme Court's policy changes is complicated by change in the content of the cases that come before the Court. I adapt from earlier scholarship a method to correct for changes in case content and use this method to measure change in the Court's support for civil liberties in the 1946–85 terms. Analysis based on this method indicates that because of changes in case content, the average difficulty of reaching a pro-civil liberties result varied during that period. With corrections for case difficulty, the Warren Court of the 1950s appears to have been more conservative, and the Burger Court more liberal, than patterns of case outcomes themselves suggest. This method, while imperfect, has utility for the measurement of policy change in the Supreme Court and other institutions and thus can serve as a building block in analyses of the processes and determinants of change.

Issues, Agendas, and Decision Making on the Supreme Court

1996 ◽  
Vol 90 (4) ◽  
pp. 853-865 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin T. McGuire ◽  
Barbara Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Agenda Building ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The U.S

In the process of agenda setting, the U.S. Supreme Court is limited to selecting from among only those cases brought before it. Despite this limitation, the justices possess considerable discretion and can reshape the issues in a case as a means of advancing their policy preferences. With data drawn from the Court's opinions, we find that, over the past twenty-five years, the justices have evinced a frequent willingness to expand the issues on their plenary docket and resolve questions not formally presented by the parties. We conclude that, notwithstanding informal norms that disapprove of this practice, issue fluidity is an important component in a continuous program of agenda building.

scholarly journals Patterson v. McLean: A Confirmation of the New Right at the U.S. Supreme Court

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 987-1009
Author(s):  
George M. Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Presidential Appointments ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S

In two consecutive national elections a conservative, Ronald Reagan, was elected President of the United States. When Justice Lewis Powell announced his retirement during the late months of the Reagan administration, it was apparent that the President's last appointment could shift the ideology of the Court to conservatism for the first time since the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower. President Reagan's prior appointments, Sandra Day O'Connor and Antonin Scalia, had joined William Rehnquist, an appointee of President Nixon and Bryon White, an appointee of President Kennedy to comprise a vociferous minority of four in many instances, especially cases involving civil rights. The unexpected opportunity for the appointment of a conservative jurist caused great anxiety in the media and in the U.S. Senate, the later having confirmation power over presidential appointments to the Supreme Court. This article examines the consequences of the Senate's confirmation of Justice Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court. The impact, which was immediate and dramatic, indicates that conservative ideology will predominate on major civil rights issues for the remainder of this century.

scholarly journals Le contrôle des prix et des revenus au Canada

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-310
Author(s):  
Richard G. Lipsey
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Traditional Methods ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The U.S

Abstract This paper is a summary of the Legal Factum submitted by the Canadian Labor Congress to the Supreme Court of Canada. It intends to demonstrate the irrelevance of the Anti-Inflationnary Act of October 1975. Three main questions are dealt with. First, was there an economic crisis in October 1975? Analysing various sets of data, the paper concludes that, by no stretch of imagination, could October 1975 be called an economic crisis. Second, was there a policy crisis in the sense that traditional methods had been tried and failed? It establishes here that no serious attempt had been made to contain inflation by traditional fiscal and monetary tools by October 1975. Third, what results can be expected from income policies? This part gives a summary of the voluminous evidence for the U.K. and the U.S., and concludes that the evidence of other incomes policies is that their effects on slowing the rate of inflation are small and often transitory.

The Company They Keep

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Baum ◽  
Neal Devins
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Dominant Ideology ◽  
Partisan Polarization ◽  
The People ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The U.S

Today’s ideological division on the U.S. Supreme Court is also a partisan division: all the Court’s liberals were appointed by Democratic presidents, all its conservatives by Republican presidents. That pattern never existed in the Court until 2010, and this book focuses on how it came about and why it’s likely to continue. Its explanation lies in the growing level of political polarization over the last several decades. One effect of polarization is that potential nominees will reflect the dominant ideology of the president’s political party. Correspondingly, the sharpened ideological division between the two political parties has given presidents stronger incentives to give high priority to ideological considerations. In addition to these well-known effects of polarization, The Company They Keep explores what social psychologists have taught us about people’s motivations. Justices take cues primarily from the people who are closest to them and whose approval they care most about: political, social, and professional elites. In an era of strong partisan polarization, elite social networks are largely bifurcated by partisan and ideological elites, and justices such as Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg live in milieus populated by like-minded elites that reinforce their liberalism or conservatism during their tenure on the Supreme Court. By highlighting and documenting this development, the book provides a new perspective on the Court and its justices.

The Appearance of Corruption

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daron R. Shaw ◽  
Brian E. Roberts ◽  
Mijeong Baek
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Campaign Finance ◽  
Behavioral Model ◽  
Political Speech ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Political Opinions ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
The U.S

The sanctity of political speech is a key element of the U.S. Constitution and a cornerstone of the American republic. When the Supreme Court linked political speech to campaign finance in its landmark Buckley v. Valeo (1976) decision, the modern era of campaign finance regulation was born. In practical terms, this decision meant that in order to pass constitutional muster, any laws limiting money in politics must be narrowly tailored and serve a compelling state interest. The lone state interest the Court was willing to entertain was the mitigation of corruption. In order to reach this argument the Court advanced a sophisticated behavioral model, one with key assumptions about how laws will affect voters’ opinions and behavior. These assumptions have received surprisingly little attention in the literature. This book takes up the task of identifying and analyzing empirically the Court’s presumed links between campaign finance regulations and political opinions and behavior. In so doing, we rely on original survey data and experiments from 2009–2016 to openly confront the question of what happens when the Supreme Court is wrong, and when the foundation of over forty years of jurisprudence is simply not true.

The United States Supreme Court’s case selection: A primer for the South African Constitutional Court in hearing matters of general public importance

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-174
Author(s):  
Paul Nkoane
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
South African ◽  
General Public ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
The South ◽  
Case Selection ◽  
The Supreme Court

The jurisdiction of the South African Constitutional Court has been extended for the court to administer ‘matters of general public importance’ in addition to administering constitutional matters. There is no South African court that accepted appeals on the grounds that the matter raised an arguable point of law of general public importance. This novelty in the South African law requires an inspection of other jurisdictions to determine which matters the Constitutional Court should accept for appeals. In this respect, the article inspects the Supreme Court of the United States case docket to determine the kinds of cases the court accepts for appeals.

美國生物科技新專利適格性原則之研究

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (21) ◽  
pp. 97-160
Author(s):  
李順典 李順典
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Legal Standards ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Patent Applications ◽  
Global Strategies ◽  
The U.S

鑑於美國最高法院重新激活了專利適格性標的要件，其認為涉及發明的自然法則、自然現象或抽象概念，除非它們也包含「發明的概念」，否則不具專利適格性，因而引發了巨大爭議。因為新專利適格性原則不當削弱了美國在創新中的領導地位，而且它們已經給美國專利制度注入了巨大的法律不確定性，所以美國應重新思考生物技術產業創新的激勵措施生物技術公司的專利適格性在不同的國家面臨不斷的改變，故必須發展保護生物技術創新的全球策略，可行的發展策略應是根據國家的法律標準申請專利。In view of the United States Supreme Court has reinvigorated the patent-eligible subject matter requirement, holding that inventions directed to laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas are not eligible for patenting unless they also contain an ''inventive concept.'' As a result, the Supreme Court has sparked tremendous controversy. Since the new patent eligibility doctrine is undermining U.S. leadership in innovation, so the U.S. shall reconsider the incentives for innovation in the biotechnologyindustry. Biotech companies facing constant changes in patent eligibility in different countries have to develop global strategies for protecting biotechnology innovations, and a recommended strategy is to file patent applications tailored to the legal standards of the countries of interest.

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