To what extent does the majority opinion writer alter his initial majority opinion to obtain the votes of the other justices? Baum (1997, p. 106) tells us that “it is standard practice [for the justices] to modify the language of opinions in an effort to win colleagues' support,” and Maltzman, Spriggs, and Wahlbeck (1999, p. 55) inform us that

We evaluate these statements in this chapter by examining the data supplied by Maltzman, Spriggs, and Wahlbeck (2000).

Maltzman, Spriggs, and Wahlbeck (2000) investigated opinion coalition formation on the Burger Court and discovered that the justices who dissented at the conference vote on the merits rarely sought any changes in the majority opinion, but when they did, their suggestions were almost always ignored by the majority opinion writer. Thus, if these justices shifted to the majority and joined the majority opinion, they almost always did so without getting the majority opinion writer to change his initial opinion. If any bargaining took place on this Court, it is much more likely to have taken place between the majority opinion writer and the members of the conference coalition.