The Supreme Court in the American Legal System

Including a comprehensive analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court, this study examines the American legal system. It extensively examines lower courts as well, providing separate chapters on state courts, the U.S. District Courts, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Analyzing these courts from a legal/extralegal framework, the book draws different conclusions about the relative influence of each based on institutional structures and empirical evidence. Finally, separate chapters on civil procedure, evidence, and criminal procedure provide exended coverage of the legal process.

Jeffrey A. Segal is Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University. He received his Ph.D. in 1983 from Michigan State University. He is co-author of six books, including, most recently, The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited (Cambridge University Press, 2002, with Harold J. Spaeth). He is also author of Majority Rule or Minority Will (Cambridge University Press 1999, with Harold J. Spaeth), which won the C. Herman Pritchett Award for best book on law and courts. Segal has also published dozens of scholarly articles, including Predicting Supreme Court Cases Probabilistically: The Search and Seizure Cases, 1962-1981, which won the Wadsworth Award for book or article 10 or more years old that has made a lasting impression on the field of law and courts.

Harold J. Spaeth is a professor of political science at Michigan State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. He is author or co-author of sixteen books, including Stare Indecisis: The Alteration of Precedent on the Supreme Court, 1946–1992 with Saul Brenner, The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited with Jeffrey A. Segal, and Majority Rule or Minority Will with Jeffrey A. Segal. He is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Law and Courts section of the American Political Science Association and served as principal investigator of the United States Supreme Court Judicial Databases.

Sara C. Benesh is Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. She previously taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of New Orleans. She was awarded a grant for research from the National Science Foundation. She is the author of The U.S. Courts of Appeals and the Law of Confessions: Perspectives on the Hierarchy of Justice (LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2002).