Hostname: page-component-669899f699-g7b4s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-24T14:52:40.690Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Influence of Amicus Curiae Briefs on U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Content

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Paul M. Collins Jr. ,
Pamela C. Corley  and
Jesse Hamner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We address fundamental questions about the ability of interest groups to shape public policy by examining the influence of amicus curiae briefs on U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion content. We argue that the justices will incorporate language from amicus briefs into their opinions based on the extent to which the amicus briefs contribute to their ability to make effective law and policy. Using plagiarism detection software and other forms of computer assisted content analysis, we find that the justices adopt language from amicus briefs based primarily on the quality of the brief's argument, the level of repetition in the brief, the ideological position advocated in the brief, and the identity of the amicus. These results add fresh insight into how interest groups influence the development of federal law by the Supreme Court.

Type
Articles on Society and the Supreme Court
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 917 - 944
Copyright
© 2015 Law and Society Association.

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

A previous version of this research was presented at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. We are grateful to participants on that panel, especially Lee Epstein, Tim Johnson, Richard Posner, Amy Steigerwalt, and Art Ward, for their thoughtful comments on this project. We also extend our thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their very useful feedback.

References

References

Ackerman, Bruce (1991) We the People, Volume 1: Foundations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Arkes, Hal R., Hackett, Catherine, & Boehm, Larry (1989) “The Generality of the Relation Between Familiarity and Judged Validity,” 2 J. of Behavioral Decision Making 81–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Michael, Kamoie, Brian, & Maltzman, Forrest (2005) “Signals from the Tenth Justice: The Political Role of the Solicitor General in Supreme Court Decision-Making,” 49 American J. of Political Science 72–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Michael A., & Maltzman, Forrest (2011) The Constrained Court: Law, Politics, and the Decisions Justices Make. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Julie A. (2012) “And the Winner Is: How Principles of Cognitive Science Resolve the Plain Language Debate,” 80 Univ. of Missouri-Kansas City Law Rev. 287–305.Google Scholar
Baum, Lawrence (1997) The Puzzle of Judicial Behavior. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baum, Lawrence (2006) Judges and Their Audiences: A Perspective on Judicial Behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benson, Robert W., & Kessler, Joan B. (1987) “Legalese v. Plain English: An Empirical Study of Persuasion and Credibility in Appellate Brief Writing,” 20 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Rev. 301–21.Google Scholar
Black, Ryan C., & Boyd, Christina L. (2013) “Selecting the Select Few: The Discuss List and the U.S. Supreme Court's Agenda-Setting Process,” 94 Social Science Q. 1124–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, Ryan C., Sorenson, Maron S., & Johnson, Timothy R. (2013) “Toward an Actor-Based Measure of Supreme Court Case Salience: Information-Seeking and Engagement During Oral Arguments,” 66 Political Research Q. 804–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, Ryan C., & Owens, Ryan J. (2012) The Solicitor General and the United States Supreme Court: Executive Branch Influence and Judicial Decisions. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloomfield, Louis A. (2013) WCopyfind. Available at: http://plagiarism.bloomfieldmedia.com/z-wordpress/ (accessed 27 June 2013).Google Scholar
Boehm, Lawrence E. (1994) “The Validity Effect: A Search for Mediating Variables,” 20 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 285–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bork, Robert H. (1990) The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Box-Steffensmeier, Janet M., Christenson, Dino P., & Hitt, Matthew P. (2013) “Quality Over Quantity: Amici Influence and Judicial Decision Making,” 107 American Political Science Rev. 446–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breyer, Stephen (2005) Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution. New York: Alfred A. Knopff.Google Scholar
Cacioppo, John T., & Petty, Richard E. (1989) “Effects of Message Repetition on Argument Processing, Recall, and Persuasion,” 10 Basic and Applied Social Psychology 3–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A., & Wright, John R. (1988) “Organized Interests and Agenda Setting in the U.S. Supreme Court,” 82 American Political Science Rev. 1109–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Amy Leigh (2002) “Raising the Bar: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the ACLU Women's Rights Project,” 11 Texas J. of Women and the Law 157–243.Google Scholar
Chien, Coleen V. (2011) “Patent Amicus Briefs: What the Courts’ Friends Can Teach Us About the Patent System,” 1 UC Irvine Law Rev. 395–430.Google Scholar
Clayton, Cornell W. (1994) “Law, Politics and the New Federalism: State Attorneys General as National Policymakers,” 56 Rev. of Politics 525–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Paul M. Jr. (2004) “Friends of the Court: Examining the Influence of Amicus Curiae Participation in U.S. Supreme Court Litigation,” 38 Law & Society Rev. 807–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Paul M. Jr (2007) “Lobbyists Before the U.S. Supreme Court: Investigating the Influence of Amicus Curiae Briefs,” 60 Political Research Q. 55–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Paul M. Jr (2008a) Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Paul M. Jr (2008b) “Amici Curiae and Dissensus on the U.S. Supreme Court,” 5 J. of Empirical Legal Studies 143–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Paul M. Jr, Corley, Pamela C., & Hamner, Jesse (2014) “Me Too? An Investigation of Repetition in U.S. Supreme Court Amicus Curiae Briefs,” 97 Judicature 228–34.Google Scholar
Cooney, Mark, & Clements, Julie (2007) “Plain Language: Do You Know Your Reader?” 86 Michigan Bar J. 42–43.Google Scholar
Corley, Pamela C. (2008) “The Supreme Court and Opinion Content: The Influence of Parties’ Briefs,” 61 Political Research Q. 468–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corley, Pamela C., Collins, Paul M. Jr., & Calvin, Bryan (2011) “Lower Court Influence on U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Content,” 73 J. of Politics 31–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ennis, Bruce L. (1984) “Effective Amicus Briefs,” 33 Catholic Univ. Law Rev. 603–09.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee, & Kobylka, Joseph F. (1992) The Supreme Court and Legal Change: Abortion and the Death Penalty. Chapel Hill, NC: The Univ. of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Eshbaugh-Soha, Matthew (2013) “Presidential Leadership of the News Media: The Case of the Press Conference,” 30 Political Communication 548–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flammer, Sean (2010) “Persuading Judges: An Empirical Analysis of Writing Style, Persuasion, and the Use of Plain English,” 16 J. of the Legal Writing Institute 183–221.Google Scholar
Friedman, Barry (1993) “Dialogue and Judicial Review,” 91 Michigan Law Rev. 577–682.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galanter, Marc (1974) “Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change,” 9 Law & Society Rev. 95–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garcia-Marquez, Teresa, & Mackie, Diane M. (2001) “The Feeling of Familiarity as a Regulator of Persuasive Processing,” 19 Social Cognition 9–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garner, Bryan A. (2009) Garner on Language and Writing. Chicago, IL: American Bar Association.Google Scholar
Garner, Bryan A. (2010) “Interviews with United States Supreme Court Justices,” 13 Scribes J. of Legal Writing 1–182.Google Scholar
Gillman, Howard (1993) The Constitution Besieged: The Rise and Demise of Lochner Era Police Powers Jurisprudence. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Grimmer, Justin (2010) “A Bayesian Hierarchical Topic Model for Political Texts: Measuring Expressed Agendas in Senate Press Releases,” 18 Political Analysis 1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guthrie, Chris, Rachlinski, Jeffrey J., & Wistrich, Andrew J. (2007) “Blinking on the Bench: How Judges Decide Cases,” 93 Cornell Law Rev. 1–43.Google Scholar
Hansford, Thomas G. (2010) “The Legal Advocacy Network,” Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Hasher, Lynn, Goldstein, David, & Toppino, Thomas (1977) “Frequency and the Conference of Referential Validity,” 16 J. of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 107–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hojnacki, Marie et al. (2012) “Studying Organizational Advocacy and Influence: Reexamining Interest Group Research,” 15 Annual Rev. of Political Science 379–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Timothy R. (2004) Oral Arguments and Decision Making on the United States Supreme Court. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press.Google Scholar
Kearney, Joseph D., & Merrill, Thomas W. (2000) “The Influence of Amicus Curiae Briefs on the Supreme Court,” 148 Univ. of Pennsylvania Law Rev. 743–853.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klüver, Heike (2009) “Measuring Interest Group Influence Using Quantitative Text Analysis,” 10 European Union Politics 535–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kunda, Ziva (1990) “The Case for Motivated Reasoning,” 108 Psychological Bulletin 480–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Landes, William M., Lessig, Lawrence, & Solimine, Michael E. (1998) “Judicial Influence: A Citation Analysis of Federal Courts of Appeals Judges,” 27 J. of Legal Studies 271–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lord, Charles G., Ross, Lee, & Lepper, Mark R. (1979) “Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence,” 37 J. of Personality and Social Psychology 2098–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lynch, Kelly J. (2004) “Best Friends? Supreme Court Law Clerks on Effective Amicus Curiae Briefs,” 20 J. of Law and Politics 33–75.Google Scholar
Martin, Andrew D., & Quinn, Kevin M. (2002) “Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999,” 10 Political Analysis 134–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGuire, Kevin T. (1993) The Supreme Court Bar: Legal Elites in the Washington Community. Charlottesville, VA: Univ. Press of Virginia.Google Scholar
Meernik, James, & Ignagni, Joseph (1997) “Judicial Review and Coordinate Construction of the Constitution,” 41 American J. of Political Science 447–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Connor, Sandra Day (1996) Henry Clay and the Supreme Court. Henry Clay Memorial Foundation. Available at: http://henryclay.org/?page_id=372 (accessed 27 February 2013).Google Scholar
Owens, Ryan J., & Epstein, Lee (2005) “Amici Curiae During the Rehnquist Court Years,” 89 Judicature 127–32.Google Scholar
Owens, Ryan J., & Wedeking, Justin P. (2011) “Justices and Legal Clarity: Analyzing the Complexity of U.S. Supreme Court Opinions,” 45 Law & Society Rev. 1027–061.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owens, Ryan J., & Wohlfarth, Patrick C. (2012) Minimizing Policy Drift: How the Transmission of Legal Information Can Protect Supreme Court Opinions. University of Wisconsin. Available at: https://apw.polisci.wisc.edu/archives/LCC-APW.pdf (accessed 3 June 2015).Google Scholar
Papke, Leslie E., & Wooldridge, Jeffrey M. (1996) “Econometric Methods for Fractional Response Variables with an Application to 401(K) Plan Participation Rates,” 11 J. of Applied Econometrics 619–32.3.0.CO;2-1>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pedersen, Helene Helboe (2013) “Is Measuring Interest Group Influence a Mission Impossible? The Case of Interest Group Influence in the Danish Parliament,” 2 Interest Groups & Advocacy 27–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, Richard A. (2007) The Little Book of Plagiarism. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Rustad, Michael, & Koenig, Thomas (1993) “The Supreme Court and Junk Social Science: Selective Distortion in Amicus Briefs,” 72 North Carolina Law Rev. 91–162.Google Scholar
Samuels, Suzanne Uttaro (2004) First among Friends: Interest Groups, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Right to Privacy. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.Google Scholar
Scalia, Antonin (1997) A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Scalia, Antonin, & Garner, Bryan A. (2008) Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges. St. Paul, MN: Thomson/West.Google Scholar
Schattschneider, E. E. (1960) The Semisovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Marian (1982) “Repetition and Rated Truth Value of Statements,” 95 American J. of Psychology 393–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A., & Spaeth, Harold J. (1993) The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Martin (1968) The Supreme Court and Administrative Agencies. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Spaeth, Harold J. (2007) The Original United States Supreme Court Database, 1953–2006 Terms. East Lansing, MI: Department of Political Science, Michigan State University.Google Scholar
Spriggs, James F. II, & Wahlbeck, Paul J. (1997) “Amicus Curiae and the Role of Information at the Supreme Court,” 50 Political Research Q. 365–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stern, Robert L., et al. (2002) Supreme Court Practice: For Practice in the Supreme Court of the United States, 8th ed. Washington, DC: Bureau of National Affairs.Google Scholar
Tausczik, Yla R., & Pennebaker, James W. (2010) “The Psychological Meaning of Words: LIWC and Computerized Text Analysis Methods,” 29 J. of Language and Social Psychology 24–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waltenburg, Eric N., & Swinford, Bill (1999) Litigating Federalism: The States Before the U.S. Supreme Court. Westport, CT: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Ward, Artemus, & Weiden, David L. (2006) Sorcerers’ Apprentices: 100 Years of Law Clerks at the United States Supreme Court. New York: New York Univ. Press.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

Beneficial National Bank v. Anderson, 539 U.S. 1 (2003).Google Scholar
Breuer v. Jim's Concrete, 538 U.S. 691 (2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clackamas Gastroenterology v. Wells, 538 U.S. 440 (2003).Google Scholar
Connecticut Department of Public Safety v. Doe, 538 U.S. 1 (2003).Google Scholar
Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190 (1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desert Palace v. Costa, 539 U.S. 90 (2003).Google Scholar
Intel Corporation v. Advanced Micro Devices, 542 U.S. 241 (2004).Google Scholar
Koons Buick v. Nigh, 543 U.S. 50 (2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Collins et al. supplementary material
Download undefined(File)
File 88.1 KB