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The Quixotic Search for Consensus on the U.S. Supreme Court: A Cross-Judicial Empirical Analysis of the Rehnquist Court Justices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Scott D. Gerber  and
Keeok Park
Scott D. Gerber
Affiliation:
Florida Coastal School of Law
Keeok Park
Affiliation:
University of La Verne
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Abstract

In this first systematic and extensive application of cross-judicial methodology, we examine the members of the Rehnquist Court (1986–94 terms) with prior appellate court experience to discern any correlation with their Supreme Court behavior in terms of nonconsensual opinion writing and voting. We find that they become less consensual as justices than they were as judges in the lower court. Importantly, this finding holds after controlling for such institutional differences between the two court levels as size, ideology, case types, stare decisis, and norms. Consistent with the neoinstitutional perspective, we surmise that this behavior change is due to the modern Supreme Court being unique, a court on which the members feel it is desirable, necessary, and possible to express policy disagreements with the majority via separate opinions and votes.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 91 , Issue 2 , June 1997 , pp. 390 - 408
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1997

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