Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T15:36:36.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The U.S. Supreme Court's Incorporation and Interpretation of Precedent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

James F. Spriggs II  and
Thomas G. Hansford
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

What explains how and why the Supreme Court interprets precedent? We contend that Justices incorporate precedents into their opinions to maximize the extent to which the Court's legal policy reflects their own policy preferences and to increase the likelihood that their opinions will be efficacious. Thus, we expect the interpretation of precedent to be influenced by the Justices' policy preferences, the norm of stare decisis, and certain characteristics of precedents. To test this idea, we examined how, in all cases decided in the 1991 and 1995 terms, the Court's majority opinions chose to legally interpret the set of available Supreme Court precedents. While our results are not uniformly supportive of our hypotheses, they lend general support to our theoretical argument. First, we demonstrate that the Court is more likely to positively interpret (rather than not interpret) a precedent that is ideologically proximate to the Court, that is legally relevant, or that was previously positively interpreted by the Court. When considering negative treatment broadly construed, our data only demonstrate that the legal relevance of a precedent exerts any influence. However, when we restrict our analysis to “strong” negative interpretation of precedent, we uncover reasonable support for the influence of stare decisis in that both the legal relevance of precedent and prior negative interpretation of precedent affect strong negative treatment. Thus, one implication of this study is that, contrary to the attitudinal model's prediction, the Court's prior treatment of precedent does appear to influence the way Justices make decisions.

Type
Papers of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , 2002 , pp. 139 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

Previously presented at the 1999 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. Both authors contributed equally to this research. Spriggs recognizes funding from the U.C. Davis Institute of Governmental Affairs/IGCC Research Fellows Program for collection of the Shepard's Citations data. We appreciate comments provided by Paul Wahlbeck and Virginia Hettinger. We thank Dave Damore, Wes Duenow, Larry Eichele, Brian French, Randy Gee, Robin Hastings, Alex Mircheff, Danielle Perry, Brandon Reeves, David Richardson, Jamie Scheidegger, Sarah Schultz, and Danny Williams for their research assistance.

References

References

Baum, Lawrence (1988) “Measuring Policy Change in the U.S. Supreme Court,” 82 American Political Science Rev. 905–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brenner, Saul, & Spaeth, Harold J. (1995) Stare Indecisis: The Alteration of Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court, 1946–1992. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A. (1985) “The Transmission of Legal Precedent: A Study of State Supreme Courts,” 79 American Political Science Rev. 178–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A. (1986) “Neither the Purse Nor the Sword: Dynamics of Public Confidence in the Supreme Court,” 80 American Political Science Rev. 1209–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A., Wright, John R., & Zorn, Christopher J. W. (1999) “Sophisticated Voting and Gate-Keeping in the Supreme Court,” 15 J. of Law, Economics, & Organization 549–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald (1978) Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee, & Knight, Jack (1998) The Choice Justices Make. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee, & Kobylka, Joseph F. (1992) The Supreme Court and Legal Change: Abortion and Death Penalty. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee, & Mershon, Carol (1996) “Measuring Political Preferences,” 40 American J. of Political Science 261–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Lee, Segal, Jeffrey A., Spaeth, Harold J., & Walker, Thomas G. (1996) The Supreme Court Compendium: Data, Decisions and Developments. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.Google Scholar
Friedman, Lawrence M., Kagan, Robert A., Cartwright, Bliss, & Wheeler, Stanton (1981) “State Supreme Courts: A Century of Style and Citation,” 33 Stanford Law Review 773–818.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gates, John B., & Phelps, Glenn A. (1996) “Intentionalism in Constitutional Opinions,” 48 Political Research Q. 245–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., & Caldeira, Gregory A. (1995) “The Legitimacy of Transnational Legal Institutions: Compliance, Support, and the European Court of Justice,” 39 American J. of Political Science 459–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L, Caldeira, Gregory A., & Baird, Vanessa A. (1998). “On the Legitimacy of National High Courts,” 92 American Political Science Rev. 343–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Charles A. (1985) “Citations to Authority in Supreme Court Opinions,” 7 Law & Policy 509–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Charles A. (1986) “Follow-Up Citations in the U.S. Supreme Court,” 39 Western Political Q. 538–47.Google Scholar
Johnson, Charles A., & Canon, Bradley C. (1984) Judicial Policies: Implementation and Impact. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.Google Scholar
Kim, Jae-On, & Mueller, Charles W. (1978) Introduction to Factor Analysis: What It Is and How to Do It. Sage University Paper Series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, 07-013. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Gary, & Zeng, Langche (2001) “Logistic Regression in Rare Events Data,” 9 Political Analysis 137–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, Jack, & Epstein, Lee (1996) “The Norm of Stare Decisis,” 40 American J of Political Science 1018–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kornhauser, Lewis A (1989) “An Economic Perspective on Stare Decisis,” 65 Chicago-Kent Law Rev. 63–91.Google Scholar
Landes William, M., & Posner, Richard A. (1976) “Legal Precedent: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis,” 19 J. of Law & Economics 249–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levi, Edward H. (1949) An Introduction to Legal Reasoning. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Long, J. Scott (1997) Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Maltzman, Forrest, Spriggs, James F., II, & Wahlbeck, Paul J. (2000) Crafting Law on the Supreme Court: The Collegial Game. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
McGuire, Kevin T., & Palmer, Barbara (1995) “Issue Fluidity on the U.S. Supreme Court,” 89 American Political Science Rev. 691–702.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merryman, John Henry (1977) “Toward a Theory of Citations: An Empirical Study of the Citation Practice of the California Supreme Court in 1950, 1960, and 1970,” 50 Southern California Law Rev. 381–428.Google Scholar
Mondak, Jeffrey J. (1994) “Policy Legitimacy and the Supreme Court: The Sources and Contexts of Legitimation,” 47 Political Research Q. 675–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Walter F., & Pritchett, C. Herman (1979) Courts, Judges, and Politics: An Introduction to the Judicial Process. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Pacelle, Richard L., & Baum, Lawrence (1992) “Supreme Court Authority in the Judiciary: A Study of Remands,” 20 American Politics Q. 169–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Scott, & Grattet, Ryken (2000) “Judicial Rhetoric, Meaning-Making, and the Institutionalization of Hate Crime Law,” 34 Law & Society Rev. 567–606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Priest, George (1980) “Selective Characteristics of Litigation,” 9 J. of Legal Studies 399–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rasmusen, Eric (1994) “Judicial Legitimacy as a Repeated Game,” 10 J. of Law, Economics, & Organization 63–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohde, David W., & Spaeth, Harold J. (1976) Supreme Court Decision Making. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Co.Google Scholar
Schauer, Frederick (1987) “Precedent,” 39 Stanford Law Rev. 571–604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A. (1984) “Predicting Supreme Court Decisions Probabilistically: The Search and Seizure Cases, 1962–1981,” 78 American Political Science Rev. 891–900.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 (1965) “Stability and Change in Judicial Decision-Making: Incrementalism or Stare Decisis,” 2 Law in Transition Q. 134–57.Google Scholar
Spaeth, Harold J. (1995) Expanded United States Supreme Court Judicial Database, 1946-1968 Terms. 1st release. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spaeth, Harold J. (1997) United States Supreme Court Judicial Database, 1953-1995 Terms, 7th release. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.Google Scholar
Spaeth, Harold J., & Segal, Jeffrey A. (1999) Majority Rule or Minority Will: Adherence to Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spriggs, James F., II (1996) “The Supreme Court and Federal Administrative Agencies: A Resource-Based Theory and Analysis of Judicial Impact,” 40 American J. of Political Science 1122–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spriggs, James F., II, & Hansford, Thomas G. (2000) “Measuring Legal Change: The Reliability and Validity of Shepard's Citations,” 53 Political Research Q. 327–41.Google Scholar
Spriggs, James F., II, & Hansford, Thomas G. (2001) “Explaining the Overruling of U.S. Supreme Court Precedent,” 63 J. of Politics 1091–1111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulmer, S. Sidney (1959) “An Empirical Analysis of Selected Aspects of Lawmaking of the United States Supreme Court,” 8 J. of Public Law 414–36.Google Scholar
Wahlbeck, Paul J. (1997) “The Life of the Law: Judicial Politics and Legal Change,” 59 J. of Politics 778–802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walsh, David J. (1997) “On the Meaning and Pattern of Legal Citations: Evidence from State Wrongful Discharge Precedent Cases,” 31 Law & Society Rev. 337–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wasby, Stephen L. (1970) The Impact of the United States Supreme Court: Some Perspectives. Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press.Google Scholar
White, Halbert (1980) “A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity,” 48 Econometrica 817–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Cases Cited

Bigelow v. Virginia, 1975. 421 U.S. 809.Google Scholar
44 Liquormart v. Rhode Island. 1996. 517 U.S. 484.Google Scholar