Michael E. Solimine

Judicial Influence: A Citation Analysis of Federal Courts of Appeals Judges

This article uses citations to the published opinions of judges on the federal courts of appeals who had 6 or more years tenure at the end of 1995 to estimate empirically the influence of individual judges. We rank judges on the basis of both total influence (citations adjusted for judicial tenure and other variables) and average influence (citations per published opinion). We also analyze the effects of factors that may be relevant to explaining differences in the influence of individual judges. These factors include both characteristics of the judges (for example, quality of law school, law school performance, sex, race, prior experience, political affiliation) and characteristics of the circuit in which they sit (such as the mix of cases in the circuit). In an appendix, we use citations to the published opinions in each circuit rather than to individual judges to measure the influence of circuits rather than individual judges.

Supreme Court Monitoring of the United States Courts of Appeals En Banc

The modern Supreme Court agrees to hear only a handful of cases each term. The Rehnquist Court has granted certiorari to less than four percent of petitions, accounting for less than one percent of all cases decided by courts of appeals. Some Court observers have hypothesized that the Court is more likely to review cases decided by courts of appeals en banc. They argue that, because legal issues heard en banc pose closer and more salient questions, these cases are more likely to be reviewed by the Supreme Court. The mere fact of en banc consideration is notable because all circuits combined sit en banc in only 80 or 90 cases a year. But other Court observers have proffered that the Supreme Court will be less likely to review a decision in which all judges of a circuit have participated because the legal issues have been more fully argued and exhaustively considered. This article considers systematically whether the Supreme Court is more likely to review an en banc court of appeals decision than a panel decision. First, we consider Supreme Court review of en banc cases during the Rehnquist Court. Then, in a multivariate empirical analysis of a three-circuit subset of those cases, we control for other variables found to influence the Courts certiorari decision, such as Solicitor General or amicus curiae support for the certiorari petition, a dissent from the court of appeals opinion, an outcome contrary to the Courts ideological composition, and an intercircuit conflict. The discussion is situated in a larger context of how legal scholars and political scientists have addressed the Rehnquist Courts shrunken caseload from both empirical and policy perspectives.

Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court

Newspapers and general periodicals, especially national newsmagazines, provide major channels of information to the public concerning decisions of the United States Supreme Court. Past studies of the press and the Court typically examined coverage of major, controversial decisions. More recent studies have emphasized broader coverage of Court decisions. A recent paper analyzed the coverage of an entire Court Term by three daily newspapers.* This study is an analogous effort to examine the coverage of the Court by weekly newsmagazines.

Choice of law in the American Courts in 1991

Following in the footsteps of Professors Kozyris, Kramer and Symeonides, this paper surveys important choice-of-law decisions in American courts during 1991. As with previous papers,2 I utilized a computer search to compile a universe of such decisions,3 and summarize those which to me seemed particularly important and interesting. Most of the paper presents these cases in subject-matter categories familiar to conflicts-of-laws teachers. The balance of the paper briefly reflects on what trends and conclusions can be derived from reviewing the cases as a whole.

The Supreme Court and the Sophisticated Use of DIGs

Almost all cases reach the U.S. Supreme Court’s merits docket through discretionary grants of writs of certiorari. On rare occasions, the Court will dismiss a writ of certiorari as improvidently granted, or DIG the case. The DIG process has received relatively little attention in the scholarly literature. This article fills that gap in several ways. First, it documents and analyses the 155 cases the Court DIGged in the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts (1954 through 2004 Terms). Second, the article examines how the Court’s decision to DIG a case relates to a number of legal and extralegal factors. Finally, it considers whether DIGs should be conceptualized as, or are sometimes examples of, sophisticated strategic behavior by the Justices.

The Causes and Consequences of the Reapportionment Revolution

GERRYMANDERING, the practice of deliberately drawing the lines of electoral districts to include or exclude groups of voters to gain partisan (or other) advantage, has been around for a long time. The colorful term finds its origins in the efforts of Elbridge Gerry, governor of Massachusetts almost two centuries ago, to draw a bizzarely shaped district that favored his party—one derided by his critics as resembling a salamander. But the possibility of gerrymanders has taken on resonance in the last four decades, since the redrawing of district lines in many states for the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures. The redrawings, and the controversies that surround them, invariably take place in the early part of each decade, not long after the official results of the U.S. Census are released. As I write we are in the midst of another round of redistricting, so the new book by political scientists Gary Cox and Jonathan Katz examining the controversy, Elbridge Gerry’s Salamander: The Electoral Consequences of the Reapportionment Revolution, could not be more timely. As the title of their book indicates, their focus is on the gloss reapportionment gives to redistricting. Each census reveals shifting population numbers between the states, and given, in particular, the fixed number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, several states each decade will need to redistrict to accommodate a greater or lesser number of seats in that state. This rhythm of reapportionment and redistricting has been around for a long time, too, but several Warren Court decisions cast the courts, and federal judges in particular, in new roles in the process. Many of the cases are familiar and indeed have attained canonical status. In 1962, Baker v. Carr1 held that a claim that a malapportioned state legislature violated the Equal Protection Clause was not a nonjusticiable political question and therefore courts could entertain such challenges. Two years after that, the Court reached the merits of such claims, and famously held in Reynolds v. Sims2 and Wesberry v. Sanders3 that the redistricting of state legislatures, and of districts for each state’s members of the U.S. House of Representatives, respectively, must be done on a one-person, one-vote basis. These cases launched the Reapportionment Revolution, and much of the story will no doubt be familiar to the reader. It is helpfully recounted by the authors. But much of what Cox and Katz address will be less familiar to