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Full-Text Articles in Law
Claiming Neutrality And Confessing Subjectivity In Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, Carolyn Shapiro
Claiming Neutrality And Confessing Subjectivity In Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, Carolyn Shapiro
All Faculty Scholarship
Supreme Court confirmation hearings provide a rare opportunity for the American people to hear what (would-be) justices think about the nature of judging and the role of the Supreme Court. In recent years, nominees have been quick to talk about judging in terms of neutrality and objectivity, most famously with Chief Justice Roberts’ invocation of the “neutral umpire,” and they have emphasized their reliance on legal texts and sources as if those sources can provide answers in difficult cases. Many of the cases heard by the Supreme Court, however, do not have objectively correct answers that can be deduced from …
Standing The Test Of Time: The Breadth Of Majority Coalitions And The Fate Of U.S. Supreme Court Precedents, Stuart M. Benjamin, Bruce A. Desmarais
Standing The Test Of Time: The Breadth Of Majority Coalitions And The Fate Of U.S. Supreme Court Precedents, Stuart M. Benjamin, Bruce A. Desmarais
Faculty Scholarship
Should a strategic Justice assemble a broader coalition for the majority opinion than is necessary, even if that means accommodating changes that move the opinion away from the author’s ideal holding? If the author’s objective is to durably move the law to his or her ideal holding, the conventional answer is no, because there is a cost and no corresponding benefit. We consider whether attracting a broad majority coalition can placate future courts. Controlling for the size of the coalition, we find that cases with ideologically narrow coalitions are more likely to be treated negatively by later courts. Specifically, adding …