Supreme Court Case Analysis

1515 Words4 Pages

Although federal agencies are normally likely to win when they appear before the Supreme Court, it is not clear what affects the outcome of the cases. Several factors are thought to play a role and scholars seek to identify and explain them, but it is difficult because the Court changes over time. A key theme seen in all of the articles is to determine if the justices’ ideological and policy preferences affect the outcome of the case. By looking at articles published by Crowley (1987), Deen (2005), Richards (2006), Sheenan (1990; 1992), Smith (2007) and Tanenhaus (1960), the coverage of different types of agencies, time periods, key factors in decision making, and consistency will better explain variations in the overall rate of success. …show more content…

The key questions asked in this article involve the type of agency, presidential administration, consistency, and justices’ ideological preferences. Different from previous articles, Deen splits the Rehnquist Court into two periods to see if the presidency had any effect on the data. From the data, Deen found that the Court support rate for social issues is not nearly as high as those for economic issues. There was also differences in success rates for the different presidential time periods. The Rehnquist Court was more successful during the earlier rather than the later period. There was also found to be differences in support levels between individual justices. It appears that the both the type of outcome sought and the attitude of the individual justice play a role in the outcome of the …show more content…

The attitudinal model says the interaction between justices’ attitudes and the agency’s policy direction will impact how the justices vote. The legal model states justices will be more likely to defer after chevron, and the jurisprudential model says justices consider whether or not the case involves rule making or if congress spoke on the issue both pre and post-chevon. Although the data demonstrated that attitudes matter, there was more support saying justices were more likely to defer after Chevron and whether or not the case involved rule-making or if congress spoke on the issue mattered. This article concluded that Chevron did impact the way the justices’ voted, so Chevron did change the way the Court

Open Document