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Schooling The Supreme Court, Christine Chabot

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Supreme Court Justices' uniform professional backgrounds have drawn increasing criticism. Yet it is unclear how diverse professional training would affect the Court's decisions. This Article offers the first empirical analysis of how Justices with diverse professional training vote: It examines a unique period when Justices with formal legal education sat with Justices who entered the profession by reading the law alone.

The study finds that Justices' levels of agreement and politically independent voting vary significantly according to their professional training. In cases which divided the Court, Justices who shared the benefit of formal legal education (1) voted together more often …