Abstract
Although there is a growing literature suggesting that the
Supreme Court of the United States is influenced by external
actors, such as Congress and the President, prior scholarships has
not found strong evidence that the Court is influenced when
deciding to overrule one of its own precedents. Many of the most
salient cases in modern U.S. jurisprudence have been overrulings of
past decisions: Brown v. Board of Education and Miranda v. Arizona
to name a couple. Does the Court not take into account the
preferences of the President nor Congress when deciding these
watershed cases? By using active signals from the other two
branches rather than mere ideological disparities and party changes
in government, as prior studies have done, I in this thesis seek to
determine if the Court is influenced by these external branches,
branches on which it is largely dependent to carry out its
decisions. I assembled an original dataset of statements made by
the President about the Supreme Court from 1950-2008 to test for
presidential influence, and to test for a congressional impact I
used an already complied Court-curbing dataset, bills that seek to
strip the Court of its power. With the President the results are
mixed, and for the House no intelligible impact is detected.
However, the results do suggest an influence from the Senate, and
thereby injuring the notion of an independent judiciary.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
I.
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………................1
II. Literature
Review…………………………….
………………………………………...……….
4
A. Ideological
Factors………………………………………………………………………...........4
B. Personal/ Internal Costs and
Constraints…………………………………………...........
5
C. Characteristics of
Cases………………………………………………………....………….....7
D. External Costs and
Constraints……………………………………….
………….……........ 9
III. Research
Design….........................................................................................13
A. Unit of
Analysis……………………………………….
.……………………….…….............13
B. Operationalization of
Concepts………………………………………………………….......13
C. Independent
Variables……………………….
………………………………….………....…15
Table 1.1: Four Possibilities of Joint Stances on a Given
Precedent……….……..........20
D. Control
Variables……………….…………………………………………….……………......23
E. Type of
Analysis………………………….……………………………………………............24
F. Goal of Research
Design……………….…………………………………………………......
25
IV. Data and
Analysis…………………………….…………………………………...……….….25
Figure 1.1: Overrulings:
1950-2001………………………………….…………..................25
Figure 1.2: Positive Presidential Statements:
1950-2001……………………….....….…27
Figure 1.3: Negative Presidential Statements:
1950-2001………………………........…27
Figure 1.4: Neutral Presidential Statements:
1950-2001………………………….....…..27
Figure 1.5: House Court-Curbing Bills:
1950-2001………………………………....…...…29
Figure 1.6: Senate Court-Curbing Bills:
1950-2001………………………………...…...…29
V.
Results……………………………………………………………………………………....……30
A. Part I: Signals without Public Approval of External
Actors……………………....……30
i. Presidential
Models……………………….
……………………………………...…….........31
ii. Interpretation of Presidential
Models………………………………………….…...........33
iii. Senate and House
Models………………….…………………………………….….......…34
Figure 1.7: Survival Curves- Senate Agrees with Case/Court
Doesn't. ..................35
Figure 1.8: Survival Curves- Senate Disagrees with Case/Court
Does…..…............37
iv. Interpretation of Senate and House
Models……………………………………..........38
v. Robustness of
Models…………………….……………………………………………........39
Figure 1.9: Survival Curves-President Agreement .5
Range………………...............42
B. Part II: Signals with Public Approval of External
Actors…………………………..…44
i. Presidential
Model…………….…………………………………………………….........…44
ii. Senate
Model……………………...…………………………………………………….......
46
iii. House Model………….
………………………………………………………………......…47
VI. Discussion and
Conclusion……………………….………………………………….……48
A. Difficulties and
Caveats……………………………..…………………………………..…51
B. Future Research and
Implications……………………….……………………………...52
VII.
References…………………………………………………………………………………..55
About this Honors Thesis
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