Coalition formation in the U.S. Supreme Court: 1969-2009

Steven Brams (steven.brams@nyu.edu), Gustavo Camilo and Alexandra D. Franz

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We apply a fallback model of coalition formation to decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, focusing on the seven natural courts, which had the same members for at least two terms, between 1969 and 2009. The predictions of majority coalitions on each of the courts are generally bourn out by the 5-4 decisions, whereas the predictions of the Martin-Quinn (2002) model, which assumes a single underlying dimension along which the justices can be ordered, are not. The present model also provides insight into the dynamic process by which subcoalitions build up into majority coalitions and, in addition, identifies "kingmakers” and “leaders” on the natural courts.

Keywords: coalition formation; U.S. Supreme Court; Martin-Quinn scores; single-peakedness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 C78 D02 D63 D71 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-net
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Related works:
Journal Article: Coalition formation on the U.S. Supreme Court: 1969–2009 (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:30390

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