Greg Goelzhauser

State Coordinating Institutions and Agenda Setting on the U.S. Supreme Court

What determines state success when petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court for review? We suggest that states can improve the likelihood of securing Supreme Court review by coordinating litigation efforts. This coordination occurs in two ways. First, some states coordinate their appellate litigation efforts internally through the creation of state solicitors general offices. Second, external coordination occurs when states join amicus briefs at the agenda setting stage urging the Supreme Court to grant review in state-filed cases. Using new data on all state-filed certiorari petitions from the 2001-2009 terms, we find that internal and external coordination is associated with an increased likelihood of the Supreme Court granting review in state-filed cases.

Analyzing Text Complexity in Political Science Research

This article analyzes the text complexity of political science research. Using automated text analysis, we examine the text complexity of a sample of articles from three leading generalist journals and four leading subfi eld journals. We also examine changes in text complexity across time by analyzing a sample of articles from the discipline’s fl agship journal during a 100-year span. Although it is not surprising that a typical political science article is diffi cult to read, it is accessible to intelligent lay readers. We found little diff erence in text complexity across time or subfi eld.

Avoiding Constitutional Cases

Why does the Supreme Court avoid deciding cases it accepts for review? In this article, I contend that the Court uses procedural access doctrines such as standing, ripeness, and mootness to sidestep constitutional cases when confronted with certain internal and external pressures. Using data from 1946 to 2001, the results suggest that the Court utilizes procedural tools to dismiss constitutional cases when preference heterogeneity on the Court increases and when the justices are confronted with issues about which groups feel strongly and are deeply divided. Although the Court does not appear to be influenced by the threat of political opposition, it is more reluctant to resolve disputes when members of Congress file an amicus brief. The results offer a first glimpse into how often the Court invokes the “passive virtues.” They also have implications for our understanding of agenda setting, decision-making in access cases, and normative constitutional theory.

Classifying Judicial Selection Institutions

The judicial selection classification problem is widely recognized but poorly understood. In this note, I identify the classification problem’s three interrelated sources: ambiguous theoretical arguments, varying decision rules for categorizing merit selection states, and not accounting for interim selections in mixed systems. To demonstrate threats to inference posed by the classification problem, I replicate a study on opinion writing productivity in state supreme courts. I also offer straightforward suggestions for resolving the classification problem. Eliminating the classification problem will help ensure that inferences are comparable across studies with respect to the consequences of institutional design choices concerning state judicial selection mechanisms.

Does Merit Selection Work? Evidence from Commission and Gubernatorial Choices

Does merit selection work? Existing evidence on institutional performance compares outcomes of interest across selection mechanisms, which does not account for the two-stage process that makes merit selection unique. Using information obtained from public records requests, this article analyzes the determinants of commission and gubernatorial selections from relevant candidate pools. The evidence suggests that although commissions and governors seem to select on certain qualifications, women are disadvantaged at the commission stage and partisanship is relevant at both stages. The results have important implications for our understanding of merit selection’s institutional performance and the broader judicial selection debate.

Concurring and Dissenting without Opinion: Noting Disagreement

We recover the lost history of concurring and dissenting without opinion on the U.S. Supreme Court. Although this practice has primarily been attributed to Justice Douglas, particularly his later decisions in tax cases, we trace its roots to the Court’s early years and demonstrate its consistent and sometimes frequent use through about the middle of the twentieth century. This article makes several contributions to the existing literature on opinion delivery practices. First, we discuss trends in the use of silent concurrences and dissents across time and justices using original data obtained from a manual review of every Supreme Court decision from its creation through OT 2014. Second, we offer a historical narrative that emphasizes the importance of institutional changes for understanding the rise and fall of this norm over time. Third, we emphasize the regular use of noting disagreement as an intermediate practice between silently acquiescing to majority positions, which characterized disagreement during the Court’s earlier years, to the proliferation of written concurrences and dissents in the modern era. Our empirical approach contributes to a growing body of quantitative historical research using comprehensive data collection efforts to gain analytical leverage over important questions concerning American legal history.

Silent Acquiescence on the Supreme Court

The norm of silent acquiescence on the Supreme Court was thought to have been eviscerated in the twentieth century by certain institutional reforms and the rise of dissenting opinions. Given that silent acquiescence is difficult to observe, however, the extent to which this norm persists on the modern Court remains unclear. To overcome this observational difficulty, I analyze private memoranda exchanged by justices who served during the Burger Court. The empirical results suggest that silent acquiescence is a rare but regular occurrence on the modern Court, and is more likely to occur in comparatively unimportant cases. Notwithstanding institutional and personnel changes that limited silent acquiescence and precipitated an increase in dissenting opinions, it appears that the practice of go-along voting continued throughout the Burger Court. The results have implications for our understanding of separate opinion writing, judicial decision-making, and judicial legitimacy.