State Litigation during the Obama Administration: Diverging Agendas in an Era of Polarized Politics

Paul Nolette

Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 2014, vol. 44, issue 3, 451-474

Abstract: Throughout the Obama Administration, state attorneys general (AGs) have collaborated on several high-profile political issues. To get a fuller picture of this contemporary AG activism, this article analyzes AG participation in lawsuits and amicus curiae briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court across three presidential administrations. The results suggest that AGs’ agendas have increasingly diverged throughout the Obama Administration, reflecting greater vertical conflict between AGs and the federal government as well as horizontal conflict among AGs themselves. Several factors have contributed to this development, including the broader polarization of American politics, intensified activism among Republican AGs, and increased collaborations between AGs and ideological interest groups. Much as with partisan contestation in other venues, these AG conflicts show few signs of abating.

Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/publius/pju023 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:publus:v:44:y:2014:i:3:p:451-474.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Publius: The Journal of Federalism is currently edited by Paul Nolette and Philip Rocco

More articles in Publius: The Journal of Federalism from CSF Associates Inc. Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().