Sara C. Benesh

Understanding Public Confidence in American Courts

While studies of public confidence in institutions have long been a part of the public opinion literature, systematic analysis of public confidence in Americas lower courts has been missing. This is troubling, especially since support for the rule of law is integral to a democracy and support for courts essential to the operation of the rule of law. I offer an explanation of public support for lower courts, finding that experience with courts, perceptions regarding the fairness of court procedures, and choices made over institutional design all play a role in explaining the publics support for state courts.

Overruled: An Event History Analysis of Lower Court Reaction to Supreme Court Alteration of Precedent

While past research has demonstrated widespread compliance in the Courts of Appeals with Supreme Court precedent (e.g., Gruhl 1980; Songer 1987; Songer, Segal, and Cameron 1994; Songer and Sheehan 1990), compliance is not automatic and is surely political. We examine compliance with Supreme Court overrulings of precedent-cases in which we might expect the lowest levels of compliance with Supreme Court policy prescriptions. We argue that several variables are relevant to the compliance decision and that those variables fall into two broad categories: characteristics of the Supreme Court precedent and characteristics of the circuit applying the precedent. In our event history analysis, we find that both precedent and circuit characteristics determine whether, and how quickly, a circuit follows a Supreme Court decision that overrules existing precedent; that is, unanimity, complexity, and the age of the overruled precedent, as well as the likelihood of Supreme Court review, are related to the compliance decision. While the Courts of Appeals adopt alterations in Supreme Court precedent rather quickly (within one or two relevant decisions), these factors exert some influence on that speed.

State Supreme Court Decision Making in Confession Cases

The federal nature of the American judiciary suggests that a state court of last resort may evade decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court if those decisions do not comport with the preferences of the state supreme court judges or are in conflict with the prevailing ethos in the state. We offer a multiple principal agency model of state supreme court decision making. We posit that the decisions of state high courts are influenced by their judicial (the U.S. Supreme Court) and political (state elites or electorates) principals, as well as by more conventional factors. We test our theory by using a stratified random sample of state court of last resort decisions regarding challenged confessions from 1970 to 1991. Our analysis supports the hypothesized influence of federal courts on state supreme courts. That influence transcends most of the known determinants of decision making on the state supreme courts. We conclude that state supreme courts defer to their judicial principal but do not hesitate to use federalism to their advantage. In this area of the law, though, they do so without compromising Supreme Court precedent.

Aggressive Grants by Affirm-Minded Justices

Given that the Supreme Court usually reverses the decision of the court below, why would justices who agree with that decision vote to hear the case? In other words, why would affirmminded justices vote to grant cert? Scholars refer to such behavior as the outcome prediction strategy. We examine its putative presence on the Vinson and Warren courts because valid and reliable data for these two courts exist. Our study has two purposes: (a) to identify and test the strategic and nonstrategic variables associated with granting cert by affirm-minded justices and (b) to offer evidence regarding whether the justices use outcome prediction. We find that although the well-known nonstrategic determinants of cert matter (e.g., salience and lower court conflict), so also do strategic considerations. We identify these variables and the strength of their impact on what fairly appears to be outcome-prediction voting by affirm-minded justices.

Norm Violation by the Lower Courts in the Treatment of Supreme Court Precedent: A Research Framework*

The U.S. Supreme Court rarely overrules its own decisions, overturning fewer than three precedents per term (Brenner and Spaeth, 1995). For the most part, the Court acts instead to preserve the consistency and continuity of the law. However, there are times when the Court formally alters precedent and, in so doing, affirms the decision of a lower court. That is, the Court upholds a lower-court ruling that conflicts with, or even ignores, its past decisions, overruling itself in the process. Such a situation violates two fundamental legal norms. First, as subordinates in the judicial hierarchy, lower-court judges are expected to abide by the decisions of their superior, the Supreme Court, and second, according to the doctrine of stare decisis, the Supreme Court has a duty to follow its own precedents. In this article, we conduct a descriptive analysis of the over-ruling decisions of the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist courts that affirmed lower-court rulings. A number of questions are relevant. Under what circumstances do lower courts perceive that a marked deviation from Supreme Court precedent is legally and politically safe? Is there evidence that the lower courts attempt to anticipate the high court’s reaction to an alteration in precedent? What role does ideology play in the lower courts’ rulings? We address these questions as we examine these unique instances in which lower courts appear to initiate the alteration of Supreme Court precedent.

The Key to a Successful Prospectus: Consult an Advisor, Early and Often

Failure to develop a dissertation topic and proposal is sometimes the downfall of graduate students. The course work may go well, exams may be passed with flying colors, and the students may even successfully write and present papers at conferences. The elusive dissertation topic, though, may continue to bring them misery. One problem is that students may wait too long to develop an idea; having no concept of what a dissertation should be and not

The Constraint of Law A Study of Supreme Court Dissensus

To study the behavior of judges, one must first consider whether judges are just like any other political actor (e.g., legislators) or whether, because of their affiliation with the judiciary, law constrains their behavior to some extent. Research aimed at considering the extent to which judges are constrained by the law is sparse, and conclusions resulting from such research are mixed. In this article, the authors explore the extent to which law constrains judges by focusing on the decision to dissent rather than concur when Supreme Court justices write separately. The authors find that, although law matters, it does not constrain.

Supreme Court GVRs and Lower-Court Reactions

We seek to understand the Supreme Courts “Grant, Vacate, and Remand” (GVR) dispositions and the reaction to those dispositions by the U.S. Court of Appeals. Drawing on data from four Court terms, we trace the reaction of the lower courts to GVR orders, culling information about the meaning of the GVR to those lower courts from their responses and from our interviews with several unnamed circuit court judges. We then code the lower-court decisions to systematically detail how circuit courts react to GVRs.