A positive political theory of rules and standards

University of Illinois Law Review

Volumn 2012, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 1-41

  Cross, Frank ^a   Jacobi, Tonja ^b   Tiller, Emerson ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

^b NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84860483689     PISSN: 02769948     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (142)

1. 555 U. S. 135 (2009).
2. See, e.g., Dale A. Nance, Rules, Standards, and the Internal Point of View, 75 FORDHAM L. REV. 1287, 1288-90 (2006) (arguing rules are preferable to standards because they provide greater definiteness and thus are conducive to greater internalization of the law and consequently the democratic value of self-governments).
3. Emerson H. Tiller & Pablo T. Spiller, Strategic Instruments: Legal Structure and Political Games in Administrative Law, 15 J. L. ECON. & ORG. 349, 349-50 (1999).
4. See also FREDERICK SCHAUER, PLAYING BY THE RULES: A PHILOSOPHICAL EXAMINATION OF RULE-BASED DECISION-MAKING IN LAW AND IN LIFE (1991);
5. Louis Kaplow, Rules Versus Standards: An Economic Analysis, 42 DUKE L. J. 557 (1992);
6. Duncan Kennedy, Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication, 89 HARV. L. REV. 1685 (1976);
7. Max M. Schanzenbach & Emerson H. Tiller, Strategic Judging Under the U. S. Sentencing Guidelines: Positive Political Theory and Evidence, 23 J. L. ECON. & ORG. 24 (2007);
8. Joseph L. Smith & Emerson H. Tiller, The Strategy of Judging: Evidence from Administrative Law, 31 J. LEGAL STUD. 61 (2002);
9. Kathleen M. Sullivan, Foreword: The Justices of Rules and Standards, 106 HARV. L. REV. 22 (1992).
10. JEFFREY A. SEGAL & HAROLD J. SPAETH, THE SUPREME COURT AND THE ATTITUDINAL MODEL (1993);
11. Tonja Jacobi & Emerson H. Tiller, Legal Doctrine and Political Control, 23 J. L. ECON. & ORG. 326 (2007).
12. 555 U. S. 135 (2009).
13. Emerson H. Tiller & Frank B. Cross, What Is Legal Doctrine?, 100 NW. U. L. REV. 517, 517 (2006).
14. Linda R. Cohen & Matthew L. Spitzer, Solving the Chevron Puzzle, 57 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS., 65, 77 (1994);
15. Frank B. Cross & Emerson H. Tiller, Judicial Partisanship and Obedience to Legal Doctrine: Whistleblowing on the Federal Courts of Appeals, 107 YALE L. J. 2155, 2156 (1998);
16. Tonja Jacobi & Emerson H. Tiller, Legal Doctrine and Political Control, 23 J. L. ECON. & ORG. 326, 327 (2007);
17. Emerson H. Tiller, Controlling Policy by Controlling Process: Judicial Influence on Regulatory Decision Making, 14 J. L. ECON. & ORG. 114, 114 (1998);
18. See Sidney A. Shapiro & Richard E. Levy, Judicial Incentives and Indeterminacy in Substantive Review of Administrative Decisions, 44 DUKE L. J. 1051, 1054 (1995) ("[T]heory has had some difficulty accounting for judicial behavior because the judiciary has been structured to sharply reduce the self-interested motivations typically identified with other political actors (e.g., financial rewards, promotion, reelection).");
19. see also Lewis A. Kornhauser, Modeling Collegial Courts I: Path-Dependence, 12 INT'L REV. L. & ECON. 169, 169 (1992) ("[I]nability to identify a plausible objective function to impute to judges has frustrated economic analysis from the outset.").
20. Judge Posner has touched on the question in Richard A. Posner, What Do Judges and Justices Maximize? (The Same Thing Everybody Else Does), 3 SUP. CT. ECON. REV. 1 (1993).
21. See, e.g., Herbert Wechsler, Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law, 73 HARV. L. REV. 1, 9-10 (1959).
22. Kent Greenawalt, How Law Can Be Determinate, 38 UCLA L. REV. 1, 2 (1990).
23. See Frank Cross, Appellate Court Adherence to Precedent, 2 J. EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUD. 369, 384-87 (2005) (arguing that the significance of judges' concern with adherence to precedent unfortunately is overlooked by research).
24. MALCOLM M. FEELEY & EDWARD L. RUBIN, JUDICIAL POLICY MAKING AND THE MODERN STATE: HOW THE COURTS REFORMED AMERICA'S PRISONS 213 (1998).
25. See, e.g., J. WOODFORD HOWARD, JR., COURTS OF APPEALS IN THE FEDERAL JUDICIAL SYSTEM: A STUDY OF THE SECOND, FIFTH, AND DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUITS 156 (1981) (reporting survey findings that appellate court judges were influenced, in part, by a feeling of "oblig[ation] to obey the Supreme Court");
26. DAVID E. KLEIN, MAKING LAW IN THE UNITED STATES COURTS OF APPEALS 21 (2002) (noting that judges consistently report that reaching "legally correct" decisions is important to them).
27. Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833, 854 (1992).
28. This decision-making model is summarized in Frank B. Cross, Political Science and the New Legal Realism: A Case of Unfortunate Interdisciplinary Ignorance, 92 NW. U. L. REV. 251, 255-64 (1997).
29. Daniel B. Rodriguez, The Positive Political Dimensions of Regulatory Reform, 72 WASH. U. L. Q. 1, 100 (1994).
30. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita & Matthew Stephenson, Informative Precedent and Intrajudicial Communication, 96 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 755, 755 (2002).
31. See James L. Gibson, Judges' Role Orientations, Attitudes, and Decisions: An Interactive Model, 72 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 911, 918 (1978) (suggesting that the judicial role induces reliance on legal materials in decision making);
32. James L. Gibson, Personality and Elite Political Behavior: The Influence of Self Esteem on Judicial Decision Making, 43 J. POL. 104, 114 (1981) (same);
33. Edward Rubin & Malcolm Feeley, Creating Legal Doctrine, 69 S. CAL. L. REV. 1989, 1997-99 (1996) (same). (Pubitemid 126406357)
34. Lauren K. Robel, Private Justice and the Federal Bench, 68 IND. L. J. 891, 902 (1993).
35. See LAWRENCE BAUM, THE PUZZLE OF JUDICIAL BEHAVIOR 61 (1997) ("[I]t pleases judges to carry out what they conceive as the judge's role.");
36. see also RICHARD A. POSNER, OVERCOMING LAW 131 (1995) ("The pleasure of judging is bound up with compliance with certain self-limiting rules-").
37. Pub. Utils. Comm'n v. Pollak, 343 U. S. 451, 466 (1952) (Frankfurter, J., recusing himself).
38. H. W. PERRY, JR., DECIDING TO DECIDE: AGENDA SETTING IN THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT (1991) (arguing that it is institutionally unsustainable to decide each case according to a judge's owns substantive preferences, and that following rules enables judges to cope with their large caseloads);
39. see Brian Leiter, American Legal Realism (Univ. Tex. Pub. Law Research Paper, Research Paper No. 042, 2002), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract= 339562 (reviewing the theories propounded by the realists of the era).
40. Judge Posner warns readers not to "be so naive as to infer the nature of the judicial process from the rhetoric of judicial opinions." Richard A. Posner, The Jurisprudence of Skepticism, 86 MICH. L. REV. 827, 865 (1988).
41. Karl N. Llewellyn, Remarks on the Theory of Appellate Decision and the Rules of Cannons About How Statutes Are to Be Construed, 3 VAND. L. REV. 395 (1950) (providing a list of cannons and "counter-cannons"-cannons supporting the opposite approach of interpretation-in statutory interpretation);
42. Mark V. Tushnet, Following the Rules Laid Down: A Critique of Interpretivism and Neutral Principles, 96 HARV. L. REV. 781, 793-804 (1983). Judge Kozinski explains that "[j]udges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted" but can be "equally ingenious in burying language" for rights they disfavor.
43. Silveira v. Lockyer, 328 F.3d 567, 568 (9th Cir. 2003) (Kozinski, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc).
44. 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) ("[S]ubtly or unconsciously, the judge's political orientation will affect decisionmaking.").
45. ROBERT H. BORK, THE TEMPTING OF AMERICA: THE POLITICAL SEDUCTION OF THE LAW 1 (1990).
46. MICHAEL COMISKEY, SEEKING JUSTICES: THE JUDGING OF SUPREME COURT NOMINEES 5-8 (2004) (referring to ideology as the "supreme factor" in selecting Supreme Court nominees).
47. TIM WEITZEL, ECONOMICS OF STANDARDS IN INFORMATION NETWORKS (2004).
48. C. HERMAN PRITCHETT, THE ROOSEVELT COURT: A STUDY IN JUDICIAL POLITICS AND VALUES, 1937-1947 xiii (1948).
49. See JEFFREY A. SEGAL & HAROLD J. SPAETH, THE SUPREME COURT AND THE ATTRRUDINAL MODEL REVISITED (2002).
50. Founding works in attitudinalism include C. HERMAN PRITCHETT, THE ROOSEVELT COURT: A STUDY IN JUDICIAL POLITICS AND VALUES, 1937-1947 (1948);
51. Glendon A. Schubert, The Study of Judicial Decision-Making As an Aspect of Political Behavior 52 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 1007 (1958). For more modern applications
52. Vanessa Baird & Tonja Jacobi, How the Dissent Becomes the Majority: Using Federalism to Transform Coalitions in the U. S. Supreme Court, 59 DUKE L. J. 183, 238 (2009);
53. Gregory A. Caldeira et al, Sophisticated Voting and Gate-Keeping in the Supreme Court, 15 J. L. & ECON. 549 (1999);
54. see Tonja Jacobi & Matthew Sag, Taking the Measure of Ideology: Empirically Measuring Supreme Court Cases, 98 GEO. L. J. 1, 75 (2009) (finding that a model that accounts for judicial ideology but that takes that ideology to be strategically pursued best accounts for Supreme Court votes from 1953 to 2008).
55. See generally Tonja Jacobi, Competing Models of Judicial Coalition Formation and Case Outcome Determination, 1 J. LEGAL ANALYSIS 411 (2009) (discussing coalition formation as a factor influencing Justices' votes).
56. Paul H. Edelman et al., Measuring Deviations from Expected Voting Patterns on Collegial Courts, 5 J. EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUD. 819, 833 (reporting that a substantial number of cases show such disordered voting);
57. see also Pablo T. Spiller & Emerson H. Tiller, Invitations to Override: Congressional Reversals of Supreme Court Decisions, 16 INT'L REV. L. & ECON. 503, 521 (1996).
58. Antonin Scalia, The Rule of Law As a Law of Rules, 56 U. CHI. L. REV. 1175, 1179 (1989).
59. LEE EPSTEIN & THOMAS G. WALKER, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW FOR A CHANGING AMERICA: RIGHTS, LIBERTIES, AND JUSTICE 21 (2d ed. 1995);
60. see also HENRY J. ABRAHAM, THE JUDICIAL PROCESS: AN INTRODUCTORY ANALYSIS OF THE COURTS OF THE U. S., ENGLAND, AND FRANCE 325 (6th ed. 1993) (suggesting that for the Court, stare decisis presents "a choice of precedents").
61. See Mark J. Richards & Herbert M. Kritzer, Jurisprudential Regimes in Supreme Court Decision Making, 96 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 305, 308 (2002).
62. Kevin T. McGuire & Michael MacKuen, Precedent and Preferences on the U. S. Supreme Court (Feb. 20, 2002) (unpublished manuscript), http://www.unc.edu/~kmcguire/papers/precedent.pdf.
63. See generally LEE EPSTEIN & JOSEPH F. KOBYLKA, THE SUPREME COURT AND LEGAL CHANGE: ABORTION AND THE DEATH PENALTY (1992). The authors found that "the language of the law seems to have a reality and motive force that shapes, to a large degree, the paths that the law enunciated by the Court takes."
64. See DANIEL R. PINELLO, GAY RIGHTS AND AMERICAN LAW 79-86, 141-42 (2003).
65. See Jeffrey A. Segal, Predicting Supreme Court Cases Probabilistically: The Search and Seizure Cases, 1962-1981, 78 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 891 (1984).
66. Donald R. Songer & Reginald S. Sheehan, Supreme Court Impact on Compliance and Outcomes: Miranda and New York Times in the United States Courts of Appeals, 43 W. POL. Q. 297, 298-99 (1990).
67. See Sara C. Benesh & Malia Reddick, Overruled: An Event History Analysis of Lower Court Reaction to Supreme Court Alteration of Precedent, 64 J. POL. 534, 548 (2002) (finding that Court unanimity, complexity, issue area, and age of the overruled precedent all influenced the rapidity of lower court compliance).
68. See John Gruhl, The Supreme Court's Impact on the Law of Libel: Compliance by Lower Federal Courts, 33 W. POL. Q. 502, 504, 517-19 (1980).
69. Donald R. Songer, The Circuit Courts of Appeals, in THE AMERICAN COURTS: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT 35, 41 (John B. Gates & Charles A. Johnson eds., 1991). A study of randomly selected Supreme Court cases found that legal model variables better predicted subsequent lower court decisions than did political model variables.
70. Charles A. Johnson, Note, Law, Politics, and Judicial Decision Making: Lower Federal Court Uses of Supreme Court Decisions, 21 LAW & SOC'Y REV. 325, 325 (1987).
71. See Frank B. Cross, Decisionmaking in the U. S. Circuit Courts of Appeals, 91 CALIF. L. REV. 1457, 1515 (2003) ("[T]he 'neutral principles' of the traditional legal model fare quite well as a descriptive model for judicial decisionmaking.").
72. See THOMAS G. HANSFORD & JAMES F. SPRIGGS II, THE POLITICS OF PRECEDENT ON THE U. S. SUPREME COURT 109-23 (2006) (showing how lower courts are responsive to citation choices of the Supreme Court).
73. Donald R. Songer et al., The Hierarchy of Justice: Testing a Principal-Agent Model of Supreme Court-Circuit Court Interactions, 38 AM. J. POL. SCI. 673, 675 (1994).
74. Richard L. Revesz, Environmental Regulation, Ideology, and the D. C. Circuit, 83 VA. L. REV. 1717, 1717-19 (1997).
75. See CASS R. SUNSTEIN ET AL., ARE JUDGES POLITICAL?: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY (2006). Data on this effect are provided throughout the book, but see figure 2.2 on pages 26-27 for a good graphic summary.
76. Daniel R. Pinello, Linking Parly to Judicial Ideology in American Courts: A Meta-Analysis, 20 JUST. SYS. J. 219, 234-36 tbl.3 (1999). Political scientists have refined their measures of judicial ideology beyond mere party of appointing president, but these produce only a very marginal improvement in predictive power.
77. See Gregory C. Sisk & Michael Heise, Judges and Ideology: Public and Academic Debates About Statistical Measures, 99 NW. U. L. REV. 743, 788-89 (2005).
78. Frederick Schauer, Opinions As Rules, 53 U. CHI. L. REV. 682, 683 (1986)
79. (reviewing BERNARD SCHWARTZ, THE UNPUBLISHED OPINIONS OFTHE WARRANT COURT (1985)).
80. Earl Maltz, The Nature of Precedent, 66 N. C. L. REV. 367, 377 (1988).
81. One study of administrative agencies did find that they were more obedient to the Supreme Court as the specificity of its doctrine increased. James F. Spriggs, II, The Supreme Court and Federal Administrative Agencies: A Resource-Based Theory and Analysis of Judicial Impact, 40 AM. J. POL. SCI. 1122 (1996).
82. See, e.g., LARRY ALEXANDER & EMILY SHERWIN, THE RULE OF RULES: MORALITY, RULES, AND THE DILEMMAS OF LAW 1, 30 (2001) (discussing the complexities of creating legal rules to implement background moral principles);
83. Pierre Schlag, Rules and Standards, 33 UCLA L. REV. 379, 382 (1985).
84. EVA H. HANKS ET AL., ELEMENTS OF LAW 45 (1994).
85. Mindgames, Inc. v. W. Publ'g Co., 218 F.3d 652, 657 (7th Cir. 2000) (describing rules and standards in the context of contract damages).
86. See Robert E. King & Cass R. Sunstein, Doing Without Speed Limits, 79 B. U. L. REV. 155 (1999).
87. Copperweld Corp. v. Independence Tube Corp., 467 U. S. 752 (1984) (stating that vertical agreements hold the promise of increasing competitive effectiveness and, therefore, are judged under the rule of reason, while certain agreements such as horizontal price fixing and market allocation are thought to be so inherently anticompetitive that they are illegal per se).
88. Federal antitrust law prohibits contracts, combinations, and conspiracies that unreasonably restrain trade. 15 U. S. C. § 1 (2006).
89. Arizona v. Maricopa Cnty. Med. Soc'y, 457 U. S. 332 (1982) (indicating that as early as 1898, the Supreme Court recognized that Congress could not have intended a literal interpretation of the word "every");
90. Nat'l Soc'y of Prof. Engineers v. United States, 435 U. S. 679 (1978) (stating that restraint is the essence of every contract and if read literally, section 1 of the Sherman Act would outlaw the entire body of contract law);
91. Comment, Leveling the Playing Field: Relevant Product Market Definition in Sports Franchise Relocation Cases, 2000 U. CHI. LEGAL F. 245, 249 n. 16 ("The rule of reason has emerged as the proper test for evaluating sports leagues under section 1.").
92. H. L. A. HART, THE CONCEPT OF LAW 124 (1961).
93. See Margaret Jane Radin, Presumptive Positivism and Trivial Cases, 14 HARV. J. L. & PUB. POL'Y 823, 828-32 (1991) (describing rules and standards as theoretical endpoints on a continuum);
94. 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).
95. Isaac Ehrlich & Richard A. Posner, An Economic Analysis of Legal Rulemaking, 3 J. LEGAL STUD. 257, 258 (1974).
96. see Pickering v. Bd. of Educ, 391 U. S. 563, 568 (1968) (holding that in a case of an alleged violation of government employee speech, the court should "arrive at a balance between the interests of the [employee], as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees").
97. see Wells v. City & Cnty. of Denver, 257 F.3d 1132, 1136-37 (10th Cir. 2001), where the court laid out the prevalent multifactor test for distinguishing between government and private speech in forum context to determine if the establishment clause had been violated. The factors the court considered in deciding whether the city had created a forum for private speakers included (1) the purpose of the sign, (2) editorial control, (3) the literal speaker, and (4) ultimate responsibility for the content.
98. See, e.g., Mathew D. McCubbins et al., Administrative Procedures As Instruments of Political Control, 3 J. L. ECON. & ORG. 243 (1987);
99. Joseph L. Smith & Emerson H. Tiller, The Strategy of Judging: Evidence from Administrative Law, 31 J. LEGAL STUD. 61 (2002);
100. See, e.g., Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, 490 (2000) (creating the rule that any fact that enhances criminal penalties must be proven beyond reasonable doubt to jury).
101. The Court has expressly "eschewed bright-line rules, instead emphasizing the fact-specific nature of the reasonableness inquiry." Ohio v. Robinethe, 519 U. S. 33, 34 (1996).
102. Likewise, the "complexity of the districting process" means that "bright-line rules are not available" for evaluations of constitutionality. Bush v. Vera, 517 U. S. 952, 984 (1996).
103. See Madeline Fleisher, Judicial Decision Making Under the Microscope: Moving Beyond Politics Versus Precedent, 60 RUTGERS L. REV. 919, 954 (2008) ("[J]udges, inculcated with professional norms regarding legal process, place objective value on the act of reaching an outcome through legal reasoning based on the application of precedent.").
104. See generally LAWRENCE BAUM, JUDGES AND THEIR AUDIENCES: A PERSPECTIVE ON JUDICIAL BEHAVIOR 50-87 (2006) (discussing how legal adherence results from concerns for public perceptions and those of the other branches and judicial colleagues).
105. 545 U. S. 1 (2005).
106. 530 U. S. 640 (2000).
107. See C. K. Rowland & Robert A. Carp, A Longitudinal Study of Party Effects on Federal District Court Policy Propensities, 24 AM. J. POL. SCI. 291, 293 (1980).
108. For a detailed model of how policy bargaining may occur at the Court, see THOMAS H. HAMMOND ET AL., STRATEGIC BEHAVIOR AND POLICY CHOICE ON THE U. S. SUPREME COURT (2005).
109. DAVID EPSTEIN & SHARYN O'HALLORAN, DELEGATING POWERS: A TRANSACTION COST POLITICS APPROACH TO POLICY MAKING UNDER SEPARATE POWERS 31 (1999).
110. William H. Rehnquist, Remarks on the Process of Judging, 49 WASH. & LEE L. REV. 263, 270 (1992).
111. Pauline T. Kim, Lower Court Discretion, 82 N. Y. U. L. REV. 383, 414 (2007).
112. Lewis A. Kornhauser & Lawrence G. Sager, The One and the Many: Adjudication in Collegial Courts, 81 CALIF. L. REV. 1, 52-53 (1993).
113. 555 U. S. 135 (2009).
114. Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, 398 (1914).
115. 338 U. S. 25 (1949).
116. 367 U. S. 643, 653 (1961).
117. Andrew D. Martin & Kevin M. Quinn, Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation Via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U. S. Supreme Court, 1953-1999, 10 POL. ANALYSIS 134 (2002).
118. Andrew D. Martin & Kevin M. Quinn, Martin-Quinn Scores: Measures, WASH. U. ST. LOUIS, http://mqscores.wustl.edu/measures.php (last visited Oct. 21, 2011).
119. See Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961).
120. 468 U. S. 897 (1984).
121. (quoting United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S. 338, 348 (1974)).
122. see also United States v. Peltier, 422 U. S. 531, 537 (1975) ("[I]f the law enforcement officers reasonably believed in good faith that evidence they had seized was admissible at trial, the 'imperative of judicial integrity' is not offended by the introduction into evidence of that material even if decisions subsequent to the search or seizure have broadened the exclusionary rule to encompass evidence seized in that manner.").
123. Leon, 468 U. S. at 918-19.
124. (citing Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 490 (1976)).
125. David M. O'Brien, Federal Judgeships in Retrospect, in THE REAGAN PRESIDENCY: PRAGMATIC CONSERVATISM AND ITS LEGACIES 327, 335-36 (W. Elliot Brownlee & Hugh Davis Graham eds., 2003) (noting that "the Reagan administration's meticulous screening of judicial nominees and hard-line positions with moderate Republicans⋯ strengthened presidential control over judicial selection" and that "Reagan achieved remarkable success" in conservatively reforming the federal judiciary through his judicial appointments).
126. Arizona v. Evans, 514 U. S. 1, 15-17 (1995);
127. see also United States v. Clarkson, 551 F.3d 1196 (10th Cir. 2009) (finding that the good-faith exception cannot apply to a circumstance in which an improper search was conducted based on police error-here conducting a search with an untrained or unreliable dog-since that would not effectively deter police misconduct, such as ensuring that a dog was actually trained or reliable before deploying it). In Herring, Justice Breyer maintained that Evans was "premised on a distinction between judicial errors and police errors"
128. Herring v. United States, 555 U. S. 135, 158 (2009) (Breyer, J., dissenting), but the Opinion of the Court rejected that view.
129. Herring, 555 U. S. at 144-48.
130. See, e.g., Robert Barnes, Justice Kennedy: The Highly Influential Man in the Middle; Court's 5 to 4 Decisions Underscore His Power, WASH. POST, May 13, 2007, at A1;
131. Robert Barnes, In Second Term, Roberts Court Defines Itself; Many 5 to 4 Decisions Reflect Narrowly Split Court That Leans Conservative, WASH. POST, June 25, 2007, at A3.
132. Herring v. United States, 555 U. S. 135, 144 (2009).
133. Adam Liptak, Supreme Court Edging Closer to Repeal of Evidence Ruling, N. Y. TIMES, Jan. 31, 2009, at A1;
134. Memorandum from John G. Roberts, Assoc. Counsel to the President, to T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr., Assistant Counselor to the President (Jan. 4, 1983), http://www.reagan. utexas.edu/roberts/Box24JGRExclusionaryRulel.pdf.
135. Adam Cohen, Editorial, Question for Judge Alito: What About One Person One Vote?, N. Y. TIMES, Jan. 3, 2006, at A16;
136. Herring, 555 U. S. at 141-42.
137. For the power of the median generally, and Justice Kennedy's role as a historically exceptionally powerful median on the Roberts Court, see generally Lee Epstein & Tonja Jacobi, Super Medians, 61 STAN. L. REV. 37 (2008).
138. 530 U. S. 428, 430 (2000).
139. Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U. S. 586, 603 (2006)
140. *9-10 (M. D. Pa. Jan. 30, 2009), the district court held that Herring's limitation on the exclusionary rule applied only to police misconduct that is "attenuated" from the arrest, and thus does not apply to a pat-down search of an individual in the absence of reasonable suspicion that the individual was involved in criminal activity, based on the officers' on-thescene observations.
141. *6 (W. D. Wis. Jan. 20, 2009), a trap and trace order issued at least partly in reliance on a misstated material fact was not exempted from the exclusionary rule.
142. *31 (D. N. J. Jan. 21, 2009).