Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2022
How often, at what times, and on what issues do courts directly make policy or indirectly influence policy making by other branches of government? We assess the judicial contribution to policy change using 268 policy histories covering 14 issue areas of US domestic policy making from 1945 to 2004. Contrary to the prominent view that courts are relatively inconsequential policy-making institutions, we find that federal courts made or influenced nearly one in four significant federal policy changes. Courts directly made almost as many significant policies as the executive branch and indirectly influenced about as many significant policies in other branches as Congress. We also find that judicial policy making and influence are concentrated in a few time periods and issue areas.
We would like to thank Mitch Pickerill, Rob Robinson, Ryan Black, Amy Steigerwalt, Steve Wasby, Todd Collins, Art Ward, David Klein, Jon Goldberg-Hiller, David T. Johnson, Valerie J. Martinez-Ebers, Chandra Hunter Swedlow, participants in the Midwest Political Science Association meeting, and various anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier iterations of this article; and Erik Jonasson, Matt Phelan, Haogen Yao, Martina Egerer, Erica Weiss, Michael Thom, Heta Mehta, Lindsay Vogelsberg, Chris Heffner, Anthony Clarke, and Fangxue Zheng for reading literature, collecting data, and other assistance with this project.