The Supreme Court in the American Legal System. By Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Sara C. Benesh. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 416p. $75.00 cloth, $28.99 paper.

If there is any example of a Kuhnian paradigm in political science, it would be the attitudinal model in Supreme Court decision making. Over a half century ago, C. Herman Pritchett boldly showed data that revealed “political” decision making by the justices of the nation's high court. Harold Spaeth was among the pioneers in this research and is now regarded as its strongest adherent. The justification for the Supreme Court Attitudinal Model, known to friends and foes alike by the acronym “SCAM,” is relatively simple: The preponderance of individual-level decision making can be explained as a function of the attitudes of the justices. Like the ideal model, it is parsimonious and explains a great deal of variance. Even those who have been critical of SCAM concede that the attitudes of the justices are the most important determinant of individual-level decision making at the Supreme Court level.