Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b6zl4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-06T06:09:44.024Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Selecting Cases for Supreme Court Review: An Underdog Model*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

S. Sidney Ulmer
S. Sidney Ulmer*
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In making review decisions, Supreme Court justices are predisposed to support underdogs and upperdogs. disproportionately but, also, are motivated to hide any "bias" that may be at work in determining votes.

In balancing these two values, justices may be expected to vote their "bias" more frequently (1) when that vote will determine outcome, and (2) when the "bias" will be harder to detect. The latter goal may be served by voting the "bias" more frequently in close cases and less frequently otherwise.

In an analysis of the voting patterns of five justices in the decade 1947–56, I found that two liberal and two conservative justices conformed to these expectations. A fifth, or control justice, defined as neither liberal nor conservative, did not pattern his votes in the manner predicted for liberals and conservatives. This relationship held when four projected intervening variables were controlled individually and collectively.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , September 1978 , pp. 902 - 910
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Preparation of this article for publication has been supported by the National Science Foundation.

References

Blalock, Hubert M. (1960). Social Statistics. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 329–43.Google Scholar
Baum, Lawrence (1977). “Policy Goals in Judicial Gatekeeping: A Proximity Model of Discretionary Jurisdiction.” American Journal of Political Science 8:13–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, John P. (1969). “Hugo L. Black. In Friedman, L. and Israel, F. (ed.), The Justices of the United States Supreme Court 1789–1969. New York: Chelsea House, pp. 2321–47.Google Scholar
Freeman, C. (1965). Elementary Applied Statistics. New York: Wiley, pp. 79–88.Google Scholar
Glick, Henry (1970). Supreme Courts in State Politics. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Goldman, Sheldon and Jahnige, Thomas (1976). The Federal Courts as a Political System. New York: Harper, pp. 199–210.Google Scholar
Kirkpatrick, Samuel A. (1974). Quantitative Analysis of Political Data. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill, pp. 51–53.Google Scholar
Pritchett, C. Herman (1948). The Roosevelt Court. New York: Macmillan, p. 208.Google Scholar
Schubert, Glendon A. (1965). The Judicial Mind. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Schubert, Glendon A. (1974). The Judicial Mind Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sheldon, Charles (1974). The American Judicial Process. New York: Dodd, pp. 73–98.Google Scholar
Snyder, Eloise C. (1956). “A Quantitative Analysis of Supreme Court Opinions from 1921–1953: A Study of the Responses of an Institution Engaged in Resolving Social Conflict.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, pp. 34–38.Google Scholar
Tanenhaus, Joseph, et al. (1963). “The Supreme Court's Certiorari Jurisdiction: Cue Theory.” In Schubert, Glendon A. (ed.), Judicial Decision Making. Glencoe: Free Press, pp. 111–32.Google Scholar
Ulmer, S. Sidney, Kirklosky, L., Hintze, W. (1972). “The Decision to Grant or Deny Certiorari: Further Considerations of Cue Theory.” Law and Society Review 6:637–43.Google Scholar
Ulmer, S. Sidney (1972). “The Decision to Grant Certiorari as an Indicator to Decision on the Merits.” Polity 4:439–47.Google Scholar
Ulmer, S. Sidney (1973). “Supreme Court Justices as Strict and Not So Strict Constructionists: Some Implications.” Law and Society Review 8:13–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulmer, S. Sidney (1976). “Upperdogs and Underdogs: Litigant Supreme Court Review.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Atlanta, 1976.Google Scholar
Ulmer, S. Sidney (1977). “Modeling the Decisions of U.S. Supreme Court Justices: Some Deductive Approaches.” In Nagel, Stuart S. (ed.), Modeling the Criminal Justice System. Beverly Hills: Sage, pp. 247–62.Google Scholar
Ulmer, S. Sidney (1979). “Researching the Supreme Court: Some Thoughts on New Directions.” Law and Policy Quarterly 1 (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.