This study aims to analyze the strategic relationship between cert decisions, merits votes and opinion writing on the US Supreme Court. For policy and for legal reasons court opinions are of utmost importance for justices. The scholarly literature indicates that the decision on the merits is pivotal to the way justices set their agenda. However, justices care dearly about the law, and thus opinions, consequential as they are to jurisprudence as well as policy, potentially constitute another strategic consideration during cert. We examine whether an institutional change following the Judiciary Act of 1925 motivates Justices to cast their votes on cert thinking about solutions to collective action problems they are about to face during their decision making process. More specifically, we explore the extent to which they cast their vote on cert thinking about their ability to influence the opinion writing process. This study uses two major sources for data. First is the Spaeth Supreme Court databases. Second is data from justices' papers at the Library of Congress in DC.
We tie together theoretically and empirically three stages of the multistage decision-making process on the US Supreme Court, Cert decisions, Merits vote and Opinion writing. Thus the study adds to our knowledge of cert and opinion writing in and of themselves, in addition to providing a more comprehensive view of the collegial game and its institutional antecedents. This project also examines the extent to which justices are strategic, and better explains the resulting jurisprudence and policy. Such an inquiry enhances scientific progress and stimulates the development of richer, more powerful theories of judicial behavior and related empirical work.
There is a potential for this project to achieve a broader impact on the study of judicial politics. Firstly, it examines an infrequently visited question: how does the court set its agenda? Secondly, some of the insights from this study may be applied to the study of other (American and foreign) courts. Finally, data coded for the purposes of this study from justices' docket books in the Library of Congress will be made available online, and coding scheme as well as any raw material will also be available. The latter will serve both educational and research goals of the academic community writ large.
