Rafael Gely

Congressional Control or Judicial Independence: The Determinants of U.S. Supreme Court Labor-Relations Decisions, 1949-1988

Extending the approach to congressional and regulatory institutions developed by Shepsle and Weingast, this article introduces an ideologically motivated judiciary. The model yields empirically refutable implications which are then tested in the framework of modelling the Courts decisions on industrial labor relations. Using information on politicians ADA scores, the composition of the Court, and the decisions of the Court, we obtain estimates of (a) the position of the Court in relation to the relevant members of Congress, and (b) the determinants of labor policy through the years. We find, first, that the Court was constrained by Congress over at least half of the period. Second, a 10-point increase in the ADA rating of the relevant member of Congress, or in the imputed ADA rating of the Supreme Court, increases the probability of a pro-union decision by approximately eight percentage points. Third, the imputed political preferences of the Court seem to be well explained simply by its political composition. Fourth, the Court does not seem to defer to the NLRB. Finally, though parsimonious, our model is a relatively good predictor of the Courts decisions, and superior to both a simple political bargaining model without institutional content and a nonsophisticated or purely legalistic judicial decision-making model. Our results, then, suggest that the Court responds, albeit indirectly, to interest group pressures.

The political economy of supreme court constitutional decisions: The case of Roosevelt's court-packing plan

U.S. Supreme Court constitutional decisions are perhaps the most powerful way of designing public policy. While a president may veto congressional legislation, or Congress may reverse a Supreme Court statutory decision, the reversal of a Supreme Court constitutional decision requires an explicit constitutional amendment. Constitutional amendments have to be ratified by state legislatures and can be initiated either by Congress or by the state legislatures. Until this date, however, all amendments to the U.S. Constitution have been initiated by Congress. Article V of the Constitution requires that constitutional amendments initiated by Congress have the support of two-thirds of each house and that to be ratified, amendments must have the support of at least three-fourths of the state legislatures.’ Constitutional amendments, then, demand a substantial political consensus and, consequently, are not easily implemented.? The difficulties in achieving a political consensus to overturn a Supreme Court constitutional decision suggest that the Supreme Court may have substantial discretion in the interpretation of the Constitution, and, furthermore, that changes in the ideological composition of the Supreme Court may have a large impact on Supreme Court decisions. In this paper we develop a theory of Supreme Court constitutional decisions following the approach developed in Gely and Spiller (1990) for statutory deci-

Protective service unions’ political activities and department expenditures

This paper examines how police and firefighter unions’ political activities influence departmental expenditures. Unlike prior research, we measure unions’ political activity independently of union bargaining power. Results indicate that a protective service union’s electoral activities positively affect departmental expenditures, and these effects are attributable to union political power rather than multilateral collective bargaining power.

Toward Identifying the Determinants of Public-Employee Unions' Involvement in Political Activities

Public-employee unions political activities directly affect collective bargaining outcomes, yet we know little about the determinants of such activities. In this paper, we present a model that specifies public-employee unions political activities to be a function of organizational characteristics of cities, institutional features of labor management relations, and various environmental factors. We tested the model using municipal-level data collected by the International City Management Association. The findings support several conclusions regarding public-employee unions political activities. First, factors that determine unions involvement in electoral politics differ from those that determine unions involvement in legislative politics. Second, electoral political activities appear to be used as a complement to collective bargaining. Third, who serves as chief negotiator for a city significantly affects unions participation in political activities.

Determinants of management’s organizational structure in the public sector

A model is developed to identify factors that are important in determining whether a municipality employs a labor relations specialist as chief negotiator and, if not, whether a municipality has a labor relations specialist on its collective bargaining team. Results indicate that municipal organizational structure for collective bargaining is influenced by the economic and legal environments within which collective bargaining occurs, the complexity of municipal collective bargaining, and various other demographic characteristics of the municipality.

Card-Check Laws and Public-Sector Union Membership in the States

We examine the impact of state card-check legislation on public-sector union membership. Based on an empirical analysis of data from 2000 to 2009, a time during which eight states enacted card-check legislation for public employees, we find significantly higher levels of public-sector union membership for states that passed card-check legislation in years after the laws were enacted relative to states that did not pass such laws. Moreover, average public-sector union membership increased for the states that passed card-check legislation after the laws were passed relative to their precard-check law union-membership levels.

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.

Understanding Card-Check Organizing: The Public Sector Experience

The use of “card checks” as a method of union organizing has recently garnered considerable attention, much of it surrounding the proposed Employee Free Choice Act. The proposed legislation seeks to amend the National Labor Relations Act by requiring employers to recognize a union when the employer is presented with evidence of majority support for union recognition via card checks. Despite this recent interest in card checks, there is little empirical research on the topic due, in part, to the lack of available data. Although card-check organizing in the private sector is not rare, such organizing is voluntary, and does not require government approval. Thus, there is little data chronicling the frequency of such events. However, card-check legislation has become increasingly common among public employees at the state and local levels. In this article, we draw upon the public sector experience to help fill the gap in our understanding of card-check organizing. In particular, the article explores card-check organizing by public sector employees in Illinois which has allowed card-check organizing since 1983, but which in 2003 amended its statute to require employers to recognize unions on the basis of card checks, and Ohio which also has allowed card-check recognition to occur since 1983, but has not passed legislation requiring card-check recognition. An analysis of public sector organizing activity in Illinois before and after the law was changed, allows us to identify the effects of changes in the law and to explore the possible implications in other contexts. Moreover, by comparing the Illinois’ experience to that of Ohio, we can more fully understand the extent to which both the presence and absence of card check legislation may have affected organizing activity. The experience of these two states provides us with a natural experiment on the effects of public sector card check legislation on organizing activity. We use data collected from state labor relations agencies in Illinois and Ohio to examine the overall levels and patterns of organizing activity in both states during the period under study (1998-2008), as well as specific contextual conditions associated with organizing activity in the two states. Our data show that in Ohio, where card-check recognition is voluntary, elections run by the state labor agency have been the predominant means of organizing new members. That was also the case in Illinois until 2003, when mandatory card-check legislation was enacted. Since then, the overwhelming majority of organizing has occurred via the mandatory card-check provision. Moreover, cross-sectional (i.e., Illinois and Ohio) and time-series (i.e., pre and post card check legislation in Illinois) comparisons of various contextual characteristics associated with organizing activity provide a more complete picture of the effects of the Illinois’ legislation. For part of our analysis, we use a methodological technique known as Qualitative Comparative Analysis (“QCA”) to identify combinations of conditions that are distinctively associated with the use of either card-checks or elections. We find that the Illinois’ legislation not only facilitated the ability of unions to organize, but also that unions responded by shifting to card checks as their primary means of organizing under certain contextual conditions and by expanding their organizing activity into different contexts.

Labor Law Access Rules and Stare Decisis: Developing a Planned Parenthood-Based Model of Reform

This article deals with labor law access rules, particularly the rights of unions to gain access to employers private property for organizing purposes. Professors Gely and Bierman provide a comprehensive analysis of the access issue and identify two major problems with the manner in which the Supreme Court has approached this area. First, the Supreme Court has dealt piecemeal with the various aspects of this problem without attempting to develop a coherent framework. Second, the Court has been reluctant to analyze the access issue within the context of todays workplace. Professors Gely and Bierman attribute the Supreme Courts flawed approach to this area to the doctrine of stare decisis. They examine the role of stare decisis in this context and argue that the Supreme Courts own recent decision on stare decisis in the Planned Parenthood case, mandates a need for reform with regard to labor law access rules.