Description
Book SynopsisOffering an analysis of the Supreme Court's most important task - shaping the law, this book analyzes the Court's interpretation or treatment of the precedents it has set in the past. It shows that while precedent can operate as a constraint on the justices' decisions, it also represents an opportunity to foster preferred societal outcomes.
Trade Review"[This book] emphasize[s] the notion that judges' behavior is not purely policy driven, but rather must be evaluated in the light of other institutional and personal factors that may shape behavior beyond attitudes... [T]he influence of institutional factors (in the form of the importance of institutional legitimacy) has an instrumental or even strategic component: the justices recognize that to render their policy pronouncements most effective, they must cite vital precedent."--Stefanie A. Lindquist, Law and Politics Book Review "The authors have done a commendable job in showing how both law and politics matter when the Supreme Court interprets precedent... [Their] uncluttered explanation of the substance of their theory and findings makes The Politics of Precedent accessible to any student of the Supreme Court."--Mark S. Hurwitz, Political Science Quarterly "There is much to like in this book. The empirical analysis is carefully executed and accessible even to those without training in higher-level statistics... [This book] will be of interest to scholars of the judiciary, and [it] will be cited regularly and routinely assigned in graduate classes in judicial politics."--Chris W. Bonneau, Perspectives on Politics
Table of ContentsList of Figures and Tables ix Acknowledgments xi Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: Explaining the Interpretation of Precedent 16 Chapter Three: Measuring the Interpretation of Precedent 43 Chapter Four: The Interpretation of Precedent over Time 55 Chapter Five: The Overruling of Precedent 78 Chapter Six: The Interpretation of Precedent in Majority Opinions 93 Chapter Seven: Lower Federal Court Responses to the Supreme Court's Interpretation of Precedent 109 Chapter Eight: Concluding Remarks and Broader Implications 124 Appendix 135 References 139 Index 151
