Assessing the Influence of Amicus Curiae Briefs on the Roberts Court

Richard L. Pacelle, John M. Scheb, Hemant K. Sharma and David H. Scott

Social Science Quarterly, 2018, vol. 99, issue 4, 1253-1266

Abstract: Objectives Our objective is to assess the influence of amicus curiae briefs on judicial behavior on the U.S. Supreme Court. Our primary hypothesis is that amicus briefs have an impact on the justices across the ideological spectrum. Our secondary hypothesis is that this influence will be greater for justices nearer the ideological center. Methods Our analysis is confined to the Roberts Court (2005 through 2014 terms, inclusive). The unit of analysis is the justice‐vote in each of the 793 full‐opinion decisions during this 10‐term period; thus, our data set contains 7,135 observations. We employ logistic regression to test the impact of amicus filings on the ideological direction of the vote cast by each justice in each case. We control for the direction of the lower court decision, the ideological orientations of the justices, the presence of the federal government (or agency or official) as party, and the presence of the solicitor general as amicus curiae. Results We find statistical support for both the primary and secondary hypotheses. Amicus briefs appear to influence the justices across the ideological spectrum. The influence is somewhat greater among the more moderate justices, although the relationship between amicus influence and judicial moderation is a weak one. Conclusions Supreme Court justices appear to respond positively to the persuasive attempts of amici. This impact is most noticeable for the justices in the middle of the Court—those who tend to be most influential in steering the Court's decision making.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12480

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:bla:socsci:v:99:y:2018:i:4:p:1253-1266

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0038-4941

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science Quarterly is currently edited by Robert L. Lineberry

More articles in Social Science Quarterly from Southwestern Social Science Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().