Thomas G. Walker

The Supreme Court and Criminal Justice Disputes: A Neo-Institutional Perspective

This study conceptualizes the U.S. Supreme Court as a political institution whose decisionmaking behavior over time can be effectively explained and predicted. A four-variable model is constructed as a means of better understanding the Courts policy outputs in criminal justice disputes. This model represents Court decisions as a function of the institutions political composition, the generally stable attitudes of its members, its policymaking priorities, and the political environment. The results indicate that the model has substantial explanatory and predictive capacity when applied to Supreme Court criminal rights cases from 1946 to 1986.

Choice Shifts and Extreme Behavior: Judicial Review in the Federal Courts

Summary Research on the group-induced choice shift has made two recent advances. First, there has been an initial indication that group-induced shifts may exist in real-world decision-making settings. And second, group discussion has been found to have a polarizing effect, moving members to take more extreme positions. The present research was designed to build upon these two recent advances. In a real-world natural experiment setting, the decisions of federal judges were examined. These decisions were all in response to a challenge to the constitutionality of a state or federal statute or governmental policy. Judges were faced with a choice between a cautious alternative (upholding the validity of the statute or policy) and an extreme alternative (striking down the statute or policy, declaring it null and void). The data indicated that federal judges were more likely to select the extreme course of action after participating in group discussion than when facing similar situations individually.

Setting a Judicial Agenda: The Decision to Grant En Banc Review in the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Agenda setting has received only modest attention in studies of the judiciary. This reflects the limited control most courts exercise over the cases they hear. We analyze the influence of ideological and legal factors on the grant of en banc rehearing in the U.S. Courts of Appeals—one of the few instances of agenda control in the lower federal courts. Unlike previous research, we examine multiple decision points in the agenda-setting process. Our results indicate that the influence of attitudinal and legal factors varies across decision points revealing a complexity obscured in previous work. Our research underscores the importance of treating agenda setting as a process rather than as a single decision.

Leader Selection and Behavior in Small Political Groups

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of varying leader selection systems on the performance of political decision-making groups. Theoretically we might expect the manner in which a leader is chosen to have an effect on the way in which he is able to exercise his powers and prerogatives. A leader who is chosen by his peers, for example, may encounter much less resistance to his leadership commands than one who is arbitrarily imposed upon the group by some outside force. Similarly a leader who is selected because of his known meritorious record may receive

The Decision-Making Superiority of Groups A Research Note

Students of group dynamics have often focused their attention on a comparison of individual and group behavior. In some respects, the group is obviously superior. For example, in tasks requiring physical force, the group’s effectiveness over an individual’s would not be questioned. However, research in this area has been more interested in whether groups are superior to individuals in the production of ideas, in imagination, and in judgment (Brown, 1965; Kelley and Thibaut, 1954). The initial work on this subject was conducted by Munsterberg (1914), and since then studies have been made in the United States and in Europe (Bos, 1937). Research in this area of inquiry has generally concluded that the group is superior to its average member working alone at the same task. But to what extent and why the group is superior are questions which remain unanswered. One of the earliest studies was conducted by Marjorie Shaw (1932) and rather dramatically highlights the general finding. Shaw compared individual and group problemsolving on questions which required complex mental proc-