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The Impact of Supreme Court Activity on the Judicial Agenda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Douglas Rice
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Abstract

When the Supreme Court takes action, it establishes national policy within an issue area. A traditional, legal view holds that the decisions of the Court settle questions of law and thereby close the door on future litigation, reducing the need for future attention to that issue. Alternatively, an emerging interest group perspective suggests the Court, in deciding cases, provides signals that encourage additional attention to particular issues. I examine these competing perspectives of what happens in the federal courts after Supreme Court decisions. My results indicate that while Supreme Court decisions generally settle areas of law in terms of overall litigation rates, they also introduce new information that leads to increases in the attention of judges and interest groups to those particular issues.

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Articles
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Law & Society Review , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , March 2014 , pp. 63 - 90
Copyright
© 2014 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

I thank Chris Zorn, Marie Hojnacki, Adam Nye, and Burt Monroe, as well as the editors and anonymous reviewers, for helpful comments and suggestions. Earlier versions of this research were presented at the 2010 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies and the 2010 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.

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