The ideology of Supreme Court opinions and citations

Iowa Law Review

Volumn 97, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 693-751

  Cross, Frank B ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84859093888     PISSN: 00210552     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (183)

1. See Edward Rubin & Malcolm Feeley, Creating Legal Doctrine, 69 S. CAL. L. REV. 1989, 1990
2. Emerson H. Tiller & Frank B. Cross, What Is Legal Doctrine?, 100 NW. U. L. REV. 517, 517 (2006).
3. see generally Brian Leiter, American Legal Realism, in THE BLACKWELL GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAW AND LEGAL THEORY 50 (Martin P. Golding & William A. Edmundson eds., 2005) (reviewing the theories propounded by the realists of the era).
4. See, e.g., Patricia M. Wald, Some Thoughts on Judging as Gleaned from One Hundred Years of the Harvard Law Review and Other Great Books, 100 HARV. L. REV. 887, 895 (1987) (noting that, "[h]owever subtly or unconsciously, the judge's political orientation will affect decisionmaking").
5. JEFFREY A. SEGAL & HAROLD J. SPAETH, THE SUPREME COURT AND THE ATTITUDINAL MODEL (1993) [hereinafter ATTITUDINAL MODEL].
6. The work was extremely popular and has been updated. JEFFREY A. SEGAL & HAROLD J. SPAETH, THE SUPREME COURT AND THE ATTITUDINAL MODEL REVISITED (2002) [hereinafter ATTITUDINAL MODEL REVISITED].
7. ATTITUDINAL MODEL, supra note 6, at 229.
8. Stefanie A. Lindquist & David E. Klein, The Influence of Jurisprudential Considerations on Supreme Court Decisionmaking: A Study of Conflict Cases, 40 LAW & SOC'Y REV. 135, 136 (2006).
9. See Daniel R. Pinello, Linking Party to Judicial Ideology in American Courts: A Meta-analysis, 20 JUST. SYS. J. 219 (1999).
10. Howard Gillman, What's Law Got To Do with It? Judicial Behavioralists Test the "Legal Model" of Judicial Decision Making, 26 LAW & SOC. INQUIRY 465, 466 (2001).
11. ATTITUDINAL MODEL REVISITED, supra note 6 (same).
12. See generally ATTITUDINAL MODEL REVISITED, supra note 6. For other critiques of reliance coding
13. see MARTIN SHAPIRO & ALEC STONE SWEET, ON LAW, POLITICS, AND JUDICIALIZATION 98 (2002) ("[W]hat judges say is even more important than how they vote.");
14. Frank B. Cross, Thomas A. Smith & Antonio Tomarchio, Essay, The Reagan Revolution in the Network of Law, 57 EMORY L. J. 1227, 1234 (2008) (stressing that the significant aspect of a Supreme Court opinion lies in the opinion, not the outcome and that "[o]utcome-based research fails to capture the differential future significance of Supreme Court opinions");
15. and Harry T. Edwards & Michael A. Livermore, Pitfalls of Empirical Studies That Attempt To Understand the Factors Affecting Appellate Decisionmaking, 58 DUKE L. J. 1895, 1908-09 (2009) (noting that separate opinions reaching the same outcome may be very different in expressing the law).
16. See, e.g., Timothy R. Johnson, James F. Spriggs II & Paul J. Wahlbeck, Oral Advocacy Before the United States Supreme Court: Does It Affect the Justices' Decisions?, 85 WASH. U. L. REV. 457 (2007) (finding that outcomes depend on the quality of oral arguments).
17. See generally THE PIONEERS OF JUDICIAL BEHAVIOR (Nancy Maveety ed., 2003).
18. See HAROLD SPAETH ET AL., SUPREME COURT DATABASE CODE BOOK 46(2011), available at http://scdb.wustl.edu/-brickFiles/2011-03/SCDB-2011-03-codebook.pdf (describing the coding for "Decision Direction" as either "liberal (=1) or conservative (=0) ").
19. Daniel E. Ho & Kevin M. Quinn, How Not To Lie with Judicial Votes: Misconceptions, Measurement, and Models, 98 CALIF. L. REV. 813, 862 (2010).
20. THOMAS B. HANSFORD & JAMES F. SPRIGGS II, THE POLITICS OF PRECEDENT ON THE U. S. SUPREME COURT 3 (2006).
21. RICHARD A. POSNER, ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF LAW 745 (8th ed. 2011).
22. ATTITUDINAL MODEL REVISITED, supra note 6, at 357.
23. Jack Knight, Are Empiricists Asking the Right Questions About Judicial Decisionmaking?, 58 DUKE L. J. 1531, 1532 (2009).
24. see also Barry Friedman, Taking Law Seriously, 4 PERSP. ON POL. 261 (2006).
25. Tonja Jacobi & Matthew Sag, Taking the Measure of Ideology: Empirically Measuring Supreme Court Cases, 98 GEO. L. J. 1, 9 (2009).
26. Tom S. Clark & Benjamin Lauderdale, Locating Supreme Court Opinions in Doctrine Space, 54 AM. J. POL. SCI. 871, 871 (2010).
27. Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992).
28. ATTITUDINAL MODEL REVISITED, supra note 6, at 325.
29. Kevin T. McGuire, Georg Vanberg, Charles E. Smith, Jr. & Gregory A. Caldeira, Measuring Policy Content on the U. S. Supreme Court, 71 J. POL. 1305 (2009).
30. Frederick Schauer, Opinions as Rules, 53 U. CHI. L. REV. 682, 683 (1986)
31. (reviewing BERNARD SCHWARTZ, THE UNPUBLISHED OPINIONS OF THE WARREN COURT (1985)).
32. Yonatan Lupu & James H. Fowler, Strategic Citations to Precedent on the U. S. Supreme Court 3-4 (ASPA Toronto Meeting Paper, 2011), available at http://papers.ssrn. com/sol3/papers. cfm?abstract-id=1358782.
33. Matthew C. Stephenson, Legal Realism for Economists, 23 J. ECON. PERSP. 191, 206 (2009).
34. Marbury v. Madison, 5 U. S. (1 Cranch.) 137 (1803).
35. See, e.g., Mark A. Hall & Ronald F. Wright, Systematic Content Analysis of Judicial Opinions, 96 CALIF. L. REV. 63 (2008) (suggesting the use of content analysis of judicial opinions);
36. Richmond McPherson & Nader Raja, Corporate Justice: An Empirical Study of Piercing Rates and Factors Courts Consider When Piercing the Corporate Veil, 45 WAKE FOREST L. REV. 931 (2010) (applying content analysis to a set of decisions).
37. Kevin T. McGuire & Georg Vanberg, Mapping the Policies of the U. S. Supreme Court: Data, Opinions, and Constitutional Law (Sept. 1-5, 2005) (unpublished manuscript), available at http://www.unc.edu/~kmcguire/papers/ McGuire-and-Vanberg-2005-APSA-Paper.pdf;
38. see also Wayne McIntosh, Michael Evans & Cynthia L. Cates, Only Words, or Data? Assessing the Relative Policy Positions in Supreme Court Briefs and Opinions (unpublished manuscript), available at http://www.bsos.umd.edu/ gvpt/apworkshop/onlywords.pdf (using quantitativelinguistics software to identify the relative conservative and liberal positions of briefs and opinions in two important Supreme Court cases).
39. For example, the Court has set clear and binding age limits for the imposition of the death penalty. Roper v. Simmons, 543 U. S. 551, 578 (2005).
40. For example, the Court has held that federal sentencing guidelines are not mandatory, United States v. Booker, 543 U. S. 220, 250 (2005)
41. See David E. Klein, Modesty, of a Sort, in the Setting of Precedents, 86 N. C. L. REV. 1213, 1234-36 (2008) (discussing opinions that go beyond the minimum necessary to set a broader rule).
42. Jonathan R. Macey, The Internal and External Costs and Benefits of Stare Decisis, 65 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 93, 106 (1989).
43. The Supreme Court developed the strict scrutiny standard for some types of constitutional challenges involving suspect classes or fundamental rights, creating a higher threshold for statutes to pass. The standard has been considered so high as to be "fatal in fact." Gerald Gunther, Foreword, In Search of Evolving Doctrine on a Changing Court: A Model for a Newer Equal Protection, 86 HARV. L. REV. 1, 8 (1972). By contrast, the rational basis test, applied to most economic regulations, is a notoriously low threshold. The standard has been called an "anything passes" rule.
44. Christopher S. Elmendorf, Refining the Democracy Canon, 95 CORNELL L. REV. 1051, 1069 (2010). While strict scrutiny requires that government action further a compelling state interest and be narrowly tailored to that interest, rational basis review requires only that government action be rationally related to any legitimate state interest. Although the Court did not resolve the issue in Heller, the choice of scrutiny could have a substantial effect on the constitutionality of gun-control regulation.
45. See Lindsey Craven, Note, Where Do We Go from Here? Handgun Regulation in a Post-Heller World, 18 WM. & MARY BILL RTS. J. 831, 855 (2010).
46. See Adam Winkler, Fatal in Theory and Strict in Fact: An Empirical Analysis of Strict Scrutiny in the Federal Courts, 59 VAND. L. REV. 793 (2006). The author found that strict scrutiny's application was not fatal to challenged laws, with a material minority of challenges failing, and that this was associated with ideology in race cases at least.
47. See McNollgast, Politics and the Courts: A Positive Theory of Judicial Doctrine and the Rule of Law, 68 S. CALIF. L. REV. 1631, 1641 (1995);
48. Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190 (1976).
49. See LEE EPSTEIN & JACK KNIGHT, THE CHOICES JUSTICES MAKE 5 & tbls.1 & 2 (1998).
50. See CASS R. SUNSTEIN, ONE CASE AT A TIME: JUDICIAL MINIMALISM ON THE SUPREME COURT 4 (1999).
51. Neil S. Siegel, A Theory in Search of a Court, and Itself: Judicial Minimalism at the Supreme Court Bar, 103 MICH. L. REV. 1951, 1963 (2005).
52. See generally Cynthia L. Cates & Wayne V. McIntosh, Retail Jurisprudence: The Judge as Entrepreneur in the Marketplace of Ideas, 11 J. L. & POL. 709 (1995) (suggesting Jerome Frank, Sandra Day O'Connor, Hans A. Linde, and Louis Brandeis as examples of "judicial entrepreneurs").
53. CASS R. SUNSTEIN, RADICALS IN ROBES: WHY EXTREME RIGHT-WING COURTS ARE WRONG FOR AMERICA 29-30 (2005).
54. Douglas W. Kmiec, Overview of the Term: The Rule of Law & Roberts's Revolution of Restraint, 34 PEPP. L. REV. 495, 497 (2007).
55. See generally Robert Anderson IV, Measuring Meta-Doctrine: An Empirical Assessment of Judicial Minimalism in the Supreme Court, 32 HARV. J. L. & PUB. POL'Y 1045 (2009) (finding that most Rehnquist Justices are minimalist, save for Thomas and Scalia, which confirms the impressionistic account).
56. Robert J. Hume, The Impact of Judicial Opinion Language on the Transmission of Federal Circuit Court Precedents, 43 LAW & SOC'Y REV. 127, 128 (2009).
57. WALTER F. MURPHY, ELEMENTS OF JUDICIAL STRATEGY 98 (1964).
58. See generally Pamela C. Corley, Robert M. Howard & David C. Nixon, The Supreme Court and Opinion Content: The Use of the Federalist Papers, 58 POL. RES. Q. 329 (2005) (finding the Court used originalist sources to legitimize constitutional interpretations);
59. Robert J. Hume, The Use of Rhetorical Sources by the U. S. Supreme Court, 40 LAW & SOC'Y REV. 817 (2006) (finding that the Supreme Court used these sources to legitimize more controversial decisions).
60. California v. Fed. Energy Regulatory Comm'n, 495 U. S. 490, 499 (1990).
61. Jeffrey A. Segal & Harold J. Spaeth, The Influence of Stare Decisis on the Votes of United States Supreme Court Justices, 40 AM. J. POL. SCI. 971, 972 (1996).
62. MICHAEL J. GERHARDT, THE POWER OF PRECEDENT 99 (2008).
63. See James H. Fowler et al., Network Analysis and the Law: Measuring the Legal Importance of Precedents at the U. S. Supreme Court, 15 POL. ANALYSIS 324, 329 (2007).
64. Montgomery N. Kosma, Measuring the Influence of Supreme Court Justices, 27 J. LEGAL STUD. 333, 338 (1998). (Pubitemid 128426691)
65. One important study of citations as a tool to evaluate opinion quality is found in RICHARD A. POSNER, CARDOZO: A STUDY IN REPUTATION 80-90 (1990).
66. See Frank B. Cross & James Spriggs II, The Most Important (and Best) Supreme Court Opinions and Justices, 60 EMORY L. J. 407, 422-28 (2010) (questioning whether any cases fully settle the law because of inevitable boundary disputes and ideological effects and finding no such effect on citations for presumably settled law);
67. Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, 164-66 (1973).
68. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 444-45 (1966).
69. See Michael J. Gerhardt, Essay, Super Precedent, 90 MINN. L. REV. 1204 (2006). The term was coined to refer to an opinion that "would be 'so effective in defining the requirements of the law that it prevents legal disputes from arising in the first place, or, if they do arise, induces them to be settled without litigation.'"
70. Michael Sinclair, Precedent, Super-Precedent, 14 GEO. MASON L. REV. 363, 364 (2007)
71. (quoting William M. Landes & Richard A. Posner, Legal Precedent: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, 19 J. L. & ECON. 249, 251 (1976)).
72. See Daniel A. Farber, Supreme Court Selection and Measures of Past Judicial Performance, 32 FLA. ST. U. L. REV. 1175, 1178-79 (2005) (suggesting that more citations to an opinion may be a feature of "just plain luck").
73. See Max Radin, The Theory of Judicial Decision: Or How Judges Think, 11 A. B. A. J. 357, 362 (1925) (declaring that "[j]udges are people and the economizing of mental effort is a characteristic of people").
74. Stefanie A. Lindquist & Frank B. Cross, Empirically Testing Dworkin's Chain Novel Theory: Studying the Path of Precedent, 80 N. Y. U. L. REV. 1156, 1165-66 (2005);
75. see also RICHARD A. POSNER, OVERCOMING LAW 125 (1995) (arguing that judges would have to sacrifice leisure time if they were to write without use of precedents).
76. ATTITUDINAL MODEL, supra note 6, at 48.
77. HAROLD J. SPAETH & JEFFREY A. SEGAL, MAJORITY RULE OR MINORITY WILL: ADHERENCE TO PRECEDENT ON THE U. S. SUPREME COURT 300-01 (1999). The study has seen some criticism, however, for failure to consider summary dispositions and questions about the coding of opinions.
78. See Donald R. Songer & Stefanie A. Lindquist, Not the Whole Story: The Impact of Justices' Values on Supreme Court Decision Making, 40 AM. J. POL. SCI. 1049, 1061 (1996). Moreover, the study ignored the effect of the certiorari process and the prospect that the original precedent was subject to expansion in the secondary vote.
79. See Frank B. Cross, Chief Justice Roberts and Precedent: A Preliminary Study, 86 N. C. L. REV. 1251, 1262-63 (2008). The study could not consider the effect of precedent on the Court's agenda, and the Justices are not likely to accept cases squarely governed by the earlier decision.
80. DAVID W. ROHDE & HAROLD J. SPAETH, SUPREME COURT DECISION MAKING 72 (1976).
81. HENRY PAUL MONAGHAN, Stare Decisis and Constitutional Adjudication, 88 COLUM. L. REV. 723, 743 (1988).
82. LEE EPSTEIN & THOMAS G. WALKER, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW FOR A CHANGING AMERICA: RIGHTS, LIBERTIES, AND JUSTICE 21 (2d ed. 1995).
83. See, e.g., CASS R. SUNSTEIN, LEGAL REASONING AND POLITICAL CONFLICT 72 (1996) (suggesting that "all cases are potentially distinguishable" for the Justices);
84. Michael Stokes Paulsen, Does the Supreme Court's Current Doctrine of Stare Decisis Require Adherence to the Supreme Court's Current Doctrine of Stare Decisis?, 86 N. C. L. REV. 1165, 1209 (2008) ("Stare decisis is a doctrine of convenience, endlessly pliable, followed only when desired, and almost always invoked as a makeweight.");
85. Frederick Schauer, Precedent, 39 STAN. L. REV. 571, 594 (1987) (claiming that "it will always be possible to distinguish a precedent").
86. See MITCHELL S. G. KLEIN, LAW COURTS AND POLICY 112 (1984). Moreover, the votes of Justices do not always trace their apparent ideological preferences even when they divide, a phenomenon that has been called "disordered voting"
87. Paul H. Edelman, David E. Klein & Stefanie A. Lindquist, Measuring Deviations from Expected Voting Patterns on Collegial Courts, 5 J. EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUD. 819, 842 (2008) (measuring extent of such voting).
88. see also Erin O'Hara, Social Constraint or Implicit Collusion?: Toward a Game Theoretic Analysis of Stare Decisis, 24 SETON HALL L. REV. 736, 745-49 (1993) (suggesting that Justices have internal reasons to obey precedent);
89. Eric Rasmusen, Judicial Legitimacy as a Repeated Game, 10 J. L. ECON. & ORG. 63, 67 (1994) (contending that reliance on precedent increases the future power of a Justice's opinions). (Pubitemid 24823406)
90. See LAWRENCE BAUM, THE PUZZLE OF JUDICIAL BEHAVIOR 61 (1997) (arguing that "it pleases judges to carry out what they conceive as the judge's role");
91. Lauren K. Robel, Private Justice and the Federal Bench, 68 IND. L. J. 891, 902 (1993) (suggesting that judges are "much more professional, in fact, than political"). Judges are socialized into the judicial role, which may produce a desire for law-following.
92. See generally James L. Gibson, Judges' Role Orientations, Attitudes, and Decisions: An Interactive Model, 72 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 911, 917 (1978).
93. Pauline T. Kim, Lower Court Discretion, 82 N. Y. U. L. REV. 383, 404 (2007).
94. See Ethan Bueno de Mesquita & Matthew Stephenson, Informative Precedent and Intrajudicial Communication, 96 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 755, 764 (2002) (noting that if the Justices ignore doctrine, "it is hard to explain why they devote so much time and intellectual energy to it in their deliberations and why they place so much emphasis on it in most of their decisions").
95. See Youngsik Lim, An Empirical Analysis of Supreme Court Justices' Decision Making, 29 J. LEGAL STUD. 721 (2000).
96. See James H. Fowler & Sangick Jeon, The Authority of Supreme Court Precedent, 30 SOC. NETWORKS 16, 16 (2008) (reporting that nineteenth century justices responded to a "crisis of legitimacy by strengthening the norm of stare decisis").
97. John Paul Stevens, The Life Span of a Judge-Made Rule, 58 N. Y. U. L. REV. 1, 2 (1983) (footnote omitted).
98. See, e.g., Herbert M. Kritzer & Mark J. Richards, The Influence of Law in the Supreme Court's Search-and-Seizure Jurisprudence, 33 AM. POL. RES. 33 (2005);
99. Mark J. Richards & Herbert M. Kritzer, Jurisprudential Regimes in Supreme Court Decision Making, 96 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 305 (2002).
100. See, e.g., Frank B. Cross et al., Citations in the U. S. Supreme Court: An Empirical Study of Their Use and Significance, 2010 U. ILL. L. REV. 489 (evaluating the significance of opinions and their authors using such analysis);.
101. Stephen J. Choi & G. Mitu Gulati, Choosing the Next Supreme Court Justice: An Empirical Ranking of Judge Performance, 78 S. CAL. L. REV. 23 (2004). Others have made similar suggestions.
102. See David Klein & Darby Morrisroe, The Prestige and Influence of Individual Judges on the U. S. Courts of Appeals, 28 J. LEGAL STUD. 371 (1999).
103. See Shephard's Citations Service, LEXISNEXIS (2008), http://law. lexisnexis.com/literature/Shepards-Quick-Ref.pdf (explaining Shepard's citations and use of signals).
104. See Richard A. Posner, An Economic Analysis of the Use of Citations in the Law, 2 AM. L. & ECON. REV. 381 (2000) (calling for more quantitative empirical studies of citations);
105. see also Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Constitutional Precedent Viewed Through the Lens of Hartian Positivist Jurisprudence, 86 N. C. L. REV. 1107, 1115 (2008) (declaring that the role of precedent "must be understood empirically").
106. Two Pesos, Inc. v. Taco Cabana, Inc., 505 U. S. 763 (1992).
107. See William M. Landes & Richard A. Posner, Rational Judicial Behavior: A Statistical Study, 1 J. LEGAL ANALYSIS 775, 777 (2009).
108. (referencing Cmty. for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U. S. 730 (1989)).
109. An example was United States v. Karo, where the Court upheld a search but rejected many of the government's legal claims. 468 U. S. 704 (1984).
110. Conversely, in United States v. Place the Court affirmed a ruling that evidence was inadmissible (a liberal outcome) but in the opinion provided for broad warrantless search powers. 462 U. S. 696 (1983).
111. Jeffrey R. Lax & Charles M. Cameron, Bargaining and Opinion Assignment on the U. S. Supreme Court, 23 J. L. ECON. & ORG. 276, 277 (2007).
112. Lawrence M. Friedman et al., State Supreme Courts: A Century of Style and Citation, 33 STAN. L. REV. 773, 804 (1981);
113. Judge Posner has suggested that string citations may simply be copied unread from prior opinions or articles. Richard A. Posner, Essay, Goodbye to the Bluebook, 53 U. CHI. L. REV. 1343, 1350 (1986).
114. HANSFORD & SPRIGGS, supra note 19, at 44
115. (citing SHEPARD'S CITATIONS 13 (1993)).
116. See Shepard's Editorial Analysis Definitions (Cases), LEXISNEXIS, http://www.lexisnexis.com/shepards-citations/printsupport/case-analysis.pdf (last visited Nov. 10, 2011).
117. See HANSFORD & SPRIGGS, supra note 19, at 45 (internal quotation marks omitted).
118. JEFFREY A. SEGAL, HAROLD J. SPAETH & SARA C. BENESH, THE SUPREME COURT IN THE AMERICAN LEGAL SYSTEM 316 (2005).
119. James F. Spriggs, II & Thomas G. Hansford, Measuring Legal Change: The Reliability and Validity of Shepard's Citations, 53 POL. RES. Q. 327 (2000).
120. Earl Maltz, The Nature of Precedent, 66 N. C. L. REV. 367, 377 (1988).
121. Pierre Schlag, Rules and Standards, 33 UCLA L. REV. 379, 382 (1985).
122. EVA H. HANKS ET AL., ELEMENTS OF LAW 78 (2d ed. 2010).
123. See, e.g., FREDERICK SCHAUER, PLAYING BY THE RULES: A PHILOSOPHICAL EXAMINATION OF RULE-BASED DECISION-MAKING IN LAW AND IN LIFE (1991);
124. Louis Kaplow, Rules Versus Standards: An Economic Analysis, 42 DUKE L.J. 557, 586-96 (1992);
125. Dale A. Nance, Rules, Standards, and the Internal Point of View, 75 FORDHAM L. REV. 1287, 1295-98 (2006);
126. Kathleen M. Sullivan, Foreword, The Justices of Rules and Standards, 106 HARV. L. REV. 22, 56-122 (1992).
127. Jason Scott Johnston, Rules and the Possibility of Social Cooperation, in RULES AND REASONING: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF FRED SCHAUER 109, 111 (Linda Meyer ed., 1999). Moreover, standards can empower the manipulation of the doctrine by subsequent, ideologically oriented courts.
128. ADRIAN VERMEULE, JUDGING UNDER UNCERTAINTY 78 (2006) (observing that if "some judges are untrustworthy, formalism may appear valuable... as a means of constraining judges' discretion").
129. See Russell B. Korobkin, Behavioral Analysis and Legal Form: Rules vs. Standards Revisited, 79 OR. L. REV. 23, 25-30 (2000) (suggesting that the concepts represent a spectrum rather than discrete categories);
130. Margaret Jane Radin, Presumptive Positivism and Trivial Cases, 14 HARV. J. L. & PUB. POL'Y 823, 828-32 (describing rules and standards as theoretical endpoints on a continuum);
131. See, e.g., Katherine M. Swift, Drawing a Line Between Terry and Miranda: The Degree and Duration of Restraint, 73 U. CHI. L. REV. 1075 (2006) (discussing the difficulties of defining the scope of the term custody under Miranda).
132. For example, the Court has held that the "complexity of the districting process" means that "bright-line rules are not available" for evaluations of its constitutionality. Bush v. Vera, 517 U. S. 952, 984 (1996).
133. In another decision, though, the Court created a bright-line rule that any fact that enhances criminal penalties must be proved beyond reasonable doubt to a jury. Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, 490 (2000).
134. Thus, it is said that rule creation requires "comprehensive vision[] and accurate foresight" unavailable to most humans. Colin S. Diver, The Optimal Precision of Administrative Rules, 93 YALE L. J. 65, 98 (1983).
135. Cass R. Sunstein, Problems with Rules, 83 CALIF. L. REV. 953, 993 (1995);
136. see also JEROME FRANK, LAW AND THE MODERN MIND 6 (1949) ("[N]o one can foresee all the future permutations and combinations of events; situations are bound to occur which were never contemplated when the original rules were made.").
137. HENRY M. HART, JR. & ALBERT M. SACKS, THE LEGAL PROCESS: BASIC PROBLEMS IN THE MAKING AND APPLICATION OF LAW 140 (William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Philip P. Frickey eds., 1994).
138. See, e.g., Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U. S. 469, 490 (2005) (Kennedy, J., concurring) (describing the "rational-basis test used to review economic regulation under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses").
139. See, e.g., Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 290 (1978) (holding that any government distinctions based on race are governed by the compelling interest standard).
140. See RUGGERO J. ALDISERT, OPINION WRITING 80 (2d ed. 2009) ("Standards of review are critically important in appellate decision making.").
141. Richard H. Fallon Jr., The Supreme Court, 1996 Term-Foreword: Implementing the Constitution, 111 HARV. L. REV. 54, 79 (1997) (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). While this is somewhat exaggerated, the strict scrutiny standard results in the vast majority of laws being invalidated.
142. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570 (2008).
143. See Robert A. Levy, Second Amendment Redux: Scrutiny, Incorporation, and the Heller Paradox, 33 HARV. J. L. & PUB. POL'Y 203, 206 (2010) (observing that "the Court did not choose a specific standard").
144. See WILLIAM D. POPKIN, EVOLUTION OF THE JUDICIAL OPINION: INSTITUTIONAL AND INDIVIDUAL SYLES 143-51 (2007).
145. Walter V. Schaefer, Precedent and Policy, 34 U. CHI. L. REV. 3, 11 (1966).
146. See SETH STERN & STEPHEN WERMIEL, JUSTICE BRENNAN: LIBERAL CHAMPION 100 (2010) (reporting that Justice Brennan "devoted more time to crafting specific language in important cases").
147. The initial article showing reliability for the measure is Lee Epstein & Jeffrey A. Segal, Measuring Issue Salience, 44 AM. J. POL. SCI. 66 (2000).
148. The measure has been used in numerous subsequent articles, including Michael A. Bailey, Brian Kamoie & Forrest Maltzman, Signals from the Tenth Justice: The Political Role of the Solicitor General in Supreme Court Decision Making, 49 AM. J. POL. SCI. 72, 78-79 (2005);
149. Vanessa A. Baird, The Effect of Politically Salient Decisions on the U. S. Supreme Court's Agenda, 66 J. POL. 755, 760 (2004);
150. and Paul M. Collins Jr., Towards an Integrated Model of the U. S. Supreme Court's Federalism Decision Making, 37 PUBLIUS 505, 509 (2007).
151. See Court in Transition; 'When a Precedent Is Reaffirmed, That Strengthens the Precedent', N. Y. TIMES (Jan. 11, 2006), http://query.nytimes. com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E04E1DD163FF 932A25752C0A9609C8B63 (quoting Justice Alito's confirmation hearing testimony).
152. See ATTITUDINAL MODEL REVISITED, supra note 6, at 141
153. see LEE EPSTEIN, JEFFREY A. SEGAL, HAROLD J. SPAETH & THOMAS G. WALKER, THE SUPREME COURT COMPENDIUM: DATA, DECISIONS & DEVELOPMENTS 80-85 (3d ed. 2003).
154. See generally VANESSA A. BAIRD, ANSWERING THE CALL OF THE COURT (2007).
155. Anthony Niblett, Do Judges Cherry Pick Precedents To Justify Extra-Legal Decisions?: A Statistical Examination, 70 MD. L. REV. 234, 255 (2010).
156. Miller v. California, 413 U. S. 15 (1973).
157. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602 (1971).
158. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966).
159. TMadsen v. Women's Health Ctr., 512 U. S. 753 (1994).
160. The case was Hutchinson v. Proxmire, 443 U. S. 111 (1979).
161. Barry Friedman & Dahlia Lithwick, Watch as We Make This Law Disappear, SLATE (Oct. 4, 2010), http://www.slate.com/articles/news-and- politics/jurisprudence/2010/10/watch-as-we-make-this-law-disappear.html.
162. see also Michael J. Gerhardt, The Irrepressibility of Precedent, 86 N. C. L. REV. 1279, 1291 (2008).
163. See generally BRIAN Z. TAMANAHA, BEYOND THE FORMALIST-REALIST DIVIDE (2010).
164. See ATTITUDINAL MODEL REVISITED, supra note 6 (presenting evidence on ideological voting patterns of the Justices).
165. ATTITUDINAL MODEL, supra note 6, at 48.
166. See Paul J. Wahlbeck, The Life of the Law: Judicial Politics and Legal Change, 59 J. POL. 778, 794 (1997).
167. Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U. S. 104 (1972)
168. See, e.g., Michael Evans et al., Recounting the Courts? Applying Automated Content Analysis To Enhance Empirical Legal Research, 4 J. EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUD. 1007 (2007);
169. See Pablo T. Spiller, Book Review, 94 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 943, 943 (2000)
170. Paul J. Wahlbeck, James F. Spriggs, II & Forrest Maltzman, Marshalling the Court: Bargaining and Accommodation on the United States Supreme Court, 42 AM. J. POL. SCI. 294, 294 (1998);
171. WILLIAM H. REHNQUIST, THE SUPREME COURT 264 (First Vintage Books ed. 2002).
172. Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190 (1976).
173. See, e.g., Virginia A. Hettinger, Stefanie A. Lindquist & Wendy L. Martinek, Separate Opinion Writing on the United States Courts of Appeals, 31 AM. POL. RES. 215 (2003) (discussing costs of separate opinion writing);
174. James F. Spriggs II, Forrest Maltzman & Paul J. Wahlbeck, Bargaining on the U. S. Supreme Court: Justices' Responses to Majority Opinion Drafts, 61 J. POL. 485, 501 (1999).
175. Chris W. Bonneau, Thomas H. Hammond, Forrest Maltzman & Paul J. Wahlbeck, Agenda Control, the Median Justice, and the Majority Opinion on the U. S. Supreme Court, 51 AM. J. POL. SCI. 890 (2007) (finding the role of the opinion author greater than that of other coalition justices). There are exceptions, of course. The Brennan biography tells of how majority Justices forced Burger to agree on an opinion that "largely incorporated Brennan's language"
176. Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476 (1957).
177. Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Serv., 436 U. S. 658 (1978).
178. Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167 (1961).
179. Monell, 436 U. S. at 691.
180. Erwin N. Griswold, William J. Brennan, Jr.-Legal Humanist, 80 HARV. L. REV. 4, 5 (1966).
181. See Lino A. Graglia, The Myth of a Conservative Supreme Court: The October 2000 Term, 26 HARV. J. L. & PUB. POL'Y 281, 284 (2003).
182. See, e.g., Christopher M. Kelly, "The Spectre of a 'Wired' Nation": Denver Area Educational Telecommunications Consortium v. FCC and First Amendment Analysis in Cyberspace, 10 HARV. J. L. & TECH. 559, 561 (describing Justice Black's "fundamentalist insistence" that the First Amendment embodied an absolute restraint on government).
183. See, e.g., Michael Herz, Nearest to Legitimacy: Justice White and Strict Rational Basis Scrutiny, 74 U. COLO. L. REV. 1329, 1347 (2003).