Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T06:54:43.948Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Advisors to Elites

Untangling Their Effect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Sara C. Benesh*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
David A. Armstrong II
Affiliation:
Western University
Zachary Wallander
Affiliation:
Northwestern Mutual
*
Contact the corresponding author, Sara C. Benesh, at [email protected].

Abstract

Because decision making is complicated, political elites seek advice when making decisions, and the ways in which they use that advice has systematic features. But, analyses of decision making among elites usually fail to account for advice. We take advantage of unique information about the advice provided to one set of elites to empirically uncover the effect of advice. Specifically, we examine law clerk recommendations on cert to Justice Blackmun. We find that, even after controlling for known determinants of cert and considering sequential decision making, the advice of a trusted advisor matters greatly.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2020 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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

The authors thank anonymous reviewers for suggestions that strengthened the article as well as attendees at a long-ago Marquette Law School conference on law clerks (“Judicial Assistants or Junior Judges,” organized by Todd Peppers and Chad Oldfather in spring 2014) that was very informative. All errors of commission or omission that remain are ours.

References

Benesh, Sara C., Brenner, Saul, and Spaeth, Harold J. 2002. “Aggressive Grants by Affirm-Minded Justices.American Politics Research 30 (3): 219–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Best, Bradley J. 2002. Law Clerks, Support Personnel, and the Decline of Consensual Norms on the United States Supreme Court, 1935–1995. New York: LFB Scholarly.Google Scholar
Bezanson, Randall P. 2012. “Good Old Number Three: Harry Blackmun and His Clerks.” In In Chambers: Stories of Supreme Court Law Clerks and Their Justices, ed. Peppers, Todd C. and Ward, Artemus, 326–41. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Birnbaum, Michael H., and Stegner, Steven E. 1979. “Source Credibility in Social Judgment: Bias, Expertise, and the Judge’s Point of View.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37:4874.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, Ryan C., and Boyd, Christina L. 2011. “The Role of Law Clerks in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Agenda-Setting Process.American Politics Research 40:147–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, Ryan C., and Owens, Ryan. 2012. “A Built-In Advantage: The Office of the Solicitor General and the U.S. Supreme Court.Political Research Quarterly 66 (2): 454–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boucher, Robert L., and Segal, Jeffrey A. 1995. “Supreme Court Justices as Strategic Decision-Makers: Aggressive Grants and Defensive Denials on the Vinson Court.Journal of Politics 57:812–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brenner, Saul, and Krol, John F. 1989. “Strategies in Certiorari Voting on the United States Supreme Court. Journal of Politics 51:828–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brenner, Saul, and Palmer, Jan. 1990. “The Law Clerks’ Recommendations and Chief Justice Vinson’s Votes on Certiorari.American Politics Quarterly 18:6880.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory. 1990. “The Discuss List: Organized Interests and Agenda-Building in the Supreme Court.Law and Society Review 24:807–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A., and Wright, John R. 1988. “Organized Interests and Agenda-Setting in the U.S. Supreme Court.American Political Science Review 82:1109–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A., and Wright, John R. 1990. “The Discuss List: Agenda Building in the Supreme Court.Law and Society Review 24 (3): 807–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A., Wright, John R., and Zorn, Christopher J. W.. 1999. “Sophisticated Voting and Gate-Keeping in the Supreme Court.Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 15 (3): 549–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calvert, Randall L. 1985. “The Value of Biased Information: A Rational Choice Model of Political Advice.Journal of Politics 47:530–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Charles, Segal, Jeffrey A., and Songer, Donald. 2000. “Strategic Auditing in a Political Hierarchy: An Informational Model of the Supreme Court’s Certiorari Decisions.American Political Science Review 94:101–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaiken, Shelly. 1980. “Heuristic versus Systematic Information Processing and the Use of Source versus Message Cues in Persuasion.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39 (5): 752–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ditslear, Corey, and Baum, Lawrence. 2001. “Selection of Law Clerks and Polarization in the U.S. Supreme Court.Journal of Politics 63 (3): 869–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, James N. 2001a. “On the Limits of Framing Effects: Who Can Frame?Journal of Politics 63 (4): 1041–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, James N. 2001b. “Using Credible Advice to Overcome Framing Effects.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 17 (1): 6282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Lee, Segal, Jeffrey A., and Spaeth, Harold J. 2007. The Digital Archive of the Papers of Justice Harry A. Blackmun. http://epstein.law.northwestern.edu/research/BlackmunArchive.html.Google Scholar
Garrison, Jean A. 2001. “Framing Foreign Policy Alternatives in the Inner Circle: President Carter, His Advisors, and the Struggles for the Arms Control Agenda.Political Psychology 22 (4): 775807.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenhouse, Linda. 2005. Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun’s Supreme Court Journey. New York: Times.Google Scholar
Hanmer, Michael J., and Ozan Kalkan, Kerem. 2013. “Behind the Curve: Clarifying the Best Approach to Calculating Predicted Probabilities and Marginal Effects from Limited Dependent Variable Models.American Journal of Political Science 57 (1): 263–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huckfeldt, Robert. 2001. “The Social Communication of Political Expertise.American Journal of Political Science 45 (2): 425–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalos, Malvin H., and Whitlock, Paula A. 2008. Monte Carlo Methods. 2nd ed. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kassop, Nancy. 2013. “Rivals for Influence on Counterterrorism Policy: White House Political Staff versus Executive Branch Legal Advisors.Presidential Studies Quarterly 43 (2): 252–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Gary, Tomz, Michael, and Wittenberg, Jason. 2000. “Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation.American Journal of Political Science 44 (2): 341–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Gary, and Zeng, Langche. 2001. “Logistic Regression in Rare Events Data.Political Analysis 9 (2): 137–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krol, John F., and Brenner, Saul. 1990. “Strategies in Certiorari Voting on the United States Supreme Court.Western Political Quarterly 43:335–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazarus, Edward. 1998. Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Liptak, Adam 2008. “A Second Justice Opts Out of a Longtime Custom: The ‘Cert Pool.’” New York Times, September 26.Google Scholar
Liptak, Adam 2017. “Gorsuch, in Sign of Independence, Is Out of Supreme Court’s Clerical Pool.” New York Times, May 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/us/politics/gorsuch-supreme-court-labor-pool-clerks.html.Google Scholar
Martin, Andrew D., and Quinn, Kevin M. 2002. “Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999.Political Analysis 10 (2): 134–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mauro, Tony 2018. “Unlike Gorsuch, Kavanaugh Jumps into SCOTUS Cert Pool.” National Law Journal, October 11. https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2018/10/11/unlike-gorsuch-kavanaugh-jumps-into-scotus-cert-pool/.Google Scholar
McGuire, Kevin T. 1998. “Explaining Executive Success in the U.S. Supreme Court.Political Research Quarterly 51 (2): 505–26.Google Scholar
Mintz, Alex, Redd, Steven B., and Vedlitz, Arnold. 2006. “Can We Generalize from Student Experiments to the Real World in Political Science, Military Affairs, and International Relations?Journal of Conflict Resolution 50 (5): 757–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mondak, Jeffery J. 1990. “Perceived Legitimacy of Supreme Court Decisions: Three Functions of Source Credibility.Political Behavior 12 (4): 363–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mondak, Jeffery J. 1993a. “Public Opinion and Heuristic Processing of Source Cues.” Political Behavior 15 (2): 167–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mondak, Jeffery J. 1993b. “Source Cues and Policy Approval: The Cognitive Dynamics of Public Support for the Reagan Agenda.” American Journal of Political Science 37 (1): 186212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Neil, Robert M. 2012. “Charting Civil Liberties and Protecting Free Expression: Learning from and Working with Justice William J. Brennan.” In In Chambers: Stories of Supreme Court Law Clerks and Their Justices, ed. Peppers, Todd C. and Ward, Artemus, 284–94. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Owens, Ryan, and Black, Ryan C. 2012. “Agenda Setting in the U.S. Supreme Court.” In New Directions in Judicial Politics, ed. McGuire, Kevin T. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Palmer, Jan 1982. “An Econometric Analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Certiorari Decisions.Public Choice 39:387–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pemstein, Daniel, Meserve, Stephen, and Melton, James. 2010. “Democratic Compromise: A Latent Variable Analysis of Ten Measures of Regime Type.Political Analysis 18 (4): 426–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peppers, Todd C. 2006. Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of the Supreme Court Law Clerk. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peppers, Todd C. 2012. “The Modern Clerkship: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Her Law Clerks.” In In Chambers: Stories of Supreme Court Law Clerks and Their Justices, ed. Peppers, Todd C. and Ward, Artemus, 391–404. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Peppers, Todd C., and Zorn, Christopher. 2008. “Law Clerk Influence on Supreme Court Decision-Making: An Empirical Assessment.DePaul Law Review 58:5177.Google Scholar
Perry, H. W. Jr., 1992. Deciding to Decide: Agenda-Setting in the United States Supreme Court. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Provine, Doris Marie. 1980. Case Selection in the United States Supreme Court. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Redd, Steven B. 2002. “The Influence of Advisers on Foreign Policy Decision Making: An Experimental Study.Journal of Conflict Resolution 48 (1): 6990.Google Scholar
Rehnquist, William H. 1957. “Who Writes Decisions of the Supreme Court.” U.S. News and World Report, December 13.Google Scholar
Sauder, Michael, and Espeland, Wendy. 2007. Fear of Falling: The Effects of “U.S. News & World Report” Rankings on U.S. Law Schools. Newtown, PA: Law School Admission Council.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Bernard, and Lesher, Stephen. 1993. Inside the Warren Court. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A., and Spaeth, Harold J. 2002. The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spaeth, Harold J., Epstein, Lee, Martin, Andrew D., Segal, Jeffrey A., Ruger, Theodore J., and Benesh, Sara C. 2015. Supreme Court Database. Version 2015, release 01. http://supremecourtdatabase.org.Google Scholar
Spaeth, Harold J., Epstein, Lee, Martin, Andrew D., Segal, Jeffrey A., Ruger, Theodore J., and Benesh, Sara C. 2019. Supreme Court Database. Version 2019, release 01. http://supremecourtdatabase.org.Google Scholar
Treier, Shawn, and Jackman, Simon. 2008. “Democracy as a Latent Variable.American Journal of Political Science 52 (1): 201–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wahlbeck, Paul L., Spriggs, James F. II, and Sigelman, Lee. 2002. “Ghostwriters on the Court? A Stylistic Analysis of U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Drafts.American Politics Research 30 (2): 166–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallander, Zachary 2014. “SCOTUS on Cert: A Look at the Blackmun Papers.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.Google Scholar
Ward, Artemus 2012. “Making Work for Idle Hands: William H. Rehnquist and His Law Clerks.” In In Chambers: Stories of Supreme Court Law Clerks and Their Justices, ed. Peppers, Todd C. and Ward, Artemus, 350–90. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Ward, Artemus, and Weiden, David L. 2006. Sorcerers’ Apprentices: 100 Years of Law Clerks at the United States Supreme Court. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Woodward, Bob, and Armstrong, Scott. 1979. The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Worthen, Kevin J. 2012. “Shirt-Tales: Clerking for Byron White.” In In Chambers: Stories of Supreme Court Law Clerks and Their Justices, ed. Peppers, Todd C. and Ward, Artemus, 303–13. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Yaniv, Ilan 2004a. “The Benefit of Additional Opinions.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 13 (2): 7578.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yaniv, Ilan 2004b. “Receiving Other People’s Advice: Influence and Benefit.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 93:113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Benesh et al. supplementary material
Download undefined(File)
File 368.3 KB