Strategic Behavior and Policy Choice on the U.S. Supreme Court

Thomas H. Hammond, Chris W. Bonneau, Reginald S. Sheehan

ISBN 10: 0804751463 / ISBN 13: 9780804751469

Published by Stanford University Press, US, 2005

About this Item

Despite several decades of research on Supreme Court decision-making by specialists in judicial politics, there is no good answer to a key question: if each justice's behavior on the Court were motivated solely by some kind of "liberal" or "conservative" ideology, what patterns should be expected in the Court's decision-making practices and in the Court's final decisions? It is only when these patterns are identified in advance that political scientists will be able to empirically evaluate theories which assert that the justices' behavior is motivated by the pursuit of their personal policy preferences. This book provides the first comprehensive and integrated model of how strategically rational Supreme Court justices should be expected to behave in all five stages of the Court's decision-making process. The authors' primary focus is on how each justice's wish to gain as desirable a final opinion as possible will affect his or her behavior at each stage of the decision-making process.

Seller Inventory # LU-9780804751469

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Strategic Behavior and Policy Choice on the U.S. Supreme Court
• Publisher: Stanford University Press, US
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804751463
• ISBN 13: 9780804751469
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 508 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Despite several decades of research on Supreme Court decision-making by specialists in judicial politics, there is no good answer to a key question: if each justice’s behavior on the Court were motivated solely by some kind of “liberal” or “conservative” ideology, what patterns should be expected in the Court’s decision-making practices and in the Court’s final decisions? It is only when these patterns are identified in advance that political scientists will be able to empirically evaluate theories which assert that the justices’ behavior is motivated by the pursuit of their personal policy preferences. This book provides the first comprehensive and integrated model of how strategically rational Supreme Court justices should be expected to behave in all five stages of the Court's decision-making process. The authors’ primary focus is on how each justice’s wish to gain as desirable a final opinion as possible will affect his or her behavior at each stage of the decision-making process.

About the Author

Thomas H. Hammond is Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University. Reginald S. Sheehan is Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University. Chris W. Bonneau is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh.