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Amicus Curiae Participation in U.S. Supreme Court Litigation: An Appraisal of Hakman's “Folklore”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Karen O'Connor  and
Lee Epstein
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In 1969 Nathan Hakman published a report of his investigation of the role of interest groups in Supreme Court litigation. He found that interest groups filed amicus curiae briefs in only 18.6 percent of the 1,175 “noncommercial” cases decided by the Supreme Court between 1928 and 1966. Participation as amicus curiae illustrates only one aspect of litigation activity, and at that one of the most limited, but Hakman took this as a reliable indicator that interest group activity in the courts was less frequent than was commonly supposed. Based on these findings, Hakman attacked the view that amicus participation was a form of political action. Such a view, he argued, was mere “scholarly folklore” (Hakman, 1969: 199).

Type
Research Note
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , 1982 , pp. 311 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

*

The authors would like to thank Allen McDonogh, three anonymous reviewers, and the editor, for their useful comments and criticisms.

References

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Cases Cited

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