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Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making

Online ISBN:
9780199870813
Print ISBN:
9780195372144
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making

Paul M. Collins
Paul M. Collins

Assistant Professor of Political Science

University of North Texas
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Published online:
1 January 2009
Published in print:
4 September 2008
Online ISBN:
9780199870813
Print ISBN:
9780195372144
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

The U.S. Supreme Court is a public policy battleground in which organized interests attempt to etch their economic, legal, and political preferences into law through the filing of amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs. In Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making, Paul M. Collins, Jr. explores the influence of organized interests on the justices' decision making, including their votes in cases and their decisions to author concurrences and dissents. The author develops novel theories to explain how interest groups might shape judicial choice, building on intuitions derived from disciplines as diverse as law, marketing, political science, and social psychology. Utilizing rigorous empirical analyses, Collins provides unequivocal evidence that interest groups play a significant role in shaping the choices justices make, although not necessarily in a manner that is consistent with prevailing views of how the justices render their decisions. The result is a theoretically rich and empirically rigorous treatment of decision making on the nation's highest Court that informs our understanding of interest group litigation, as well as the legal and attitudinal models of judicial choice.

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