Todd A. Collins

Case Salience and Media Coverage of Supreme Court Decisions - Toward a New Measure

Judicial behavior is contingent on case salience. Unfortunately, existing measures of case salience have met with some skepticism. After discussing the characteristics of an ideal measure of salience, the authors construct a new measure of case salience. This new measure expands on prior studies by examining coverage in four diverse newspapers and includes coverage anywhere in the paper, instead of concentrating on front-page coverage only. By developing this new measure, the authors uncover patterns about national media coverage of the Court and provide a potentially more useful measure of case salience.

Making the Cases “Real”: Newspaper Coverage of U.S. Supreme Court Cases 1953–2004

Which U.S. Supreme Court cases are deemed newsworthy enough to appear on the front page of a major newspaper? Which are covered, but do not appear on the front page, and which are not covered at all? We answer these questions using a unique data set of newspaper coverage of Supreme Court cases in four newspapers from 1953 to 2004—a data set spanning more than 6,200 observations, 25 natural courts, and the tenure of three Chief Justices. We find that the overall proportion of Supreme Court cases covered has declined over this period (from a peak of nearly 100%), although the proportion of cases on the front page has remained more constant. The results of a selection model also suggest that, in the aggregate, coverage patterns on the front page are explained by established norms of newsworthiness, but coverage elsewhere in the paper often follows different criteria. When examining different newspapers in isolation, we also find that individual papers do vary, to a limited degree, in their selection of newsworthy cases. These results are important for those concerned about citizen information about politics, the relationship between the courts and the public, and media gatekeeping.

The Value of Precedent: Appellate Briefs and Judicial Opinions in the U.S. Courts of Appeals

This study of appellate advocacy examines factors that affect judicial treatment of precedents identified in litigant briefs. Although we find some attorney and party characteristics influence whether a court addresses precedent cited by a party, legal resources are not as influential in the courts adoption of a partys use of a precedent. At times, ideological congruence between the circuit panel and the litigant increases the likelihood that the courts opinion will use a precedent in the same way as presented by the litigants. Concerning attorney experience, when their clients ultimately win the case, attorneys with no experience before the circuit are less likely to see the court use litigant-cited precedents in a similar way to the party brief. Even when their clients lose, experienced attorneys are more likely to see the courts opinion address the precedents the attorneys have raised positively. This suggests that attorney experience has some influence in shaping legal policy, regardless of whether the litigant wins or loses.

Being Part of the “Home Team”: Perceptions of Professional Interactions with Outsider Attorneys

Understanding how attorneys’ perceptions of “insider” and “outsider” status affect negotiations is of both theoretical and practical importance for understanding the judicial system. We utilize a comprehensive survey of attorneys from one state to explore views of trustworthiness and negotiations. Overall, as attorneys become more embedded in their in-group, they increasingly report lower trust levels and less effective negotiations with outsiders. These relationships do vary somewhat by the scope and location of the attorney’s practice. Our findings provide insight into one possible causal mechanism underlying the “repeat player” advantage; they also suggest new directions for research on case outcomes.

The Case Salience Index, Public Opinion, and Decision Making on the U.S. Supreme Court

ABSTRACT Recent work on the U.S. Supreme Court argues that Supreme Court decision making is constrained by several factors, including public opinion. These constraints are not uniform across cases, however, and some suggest that public opinion may only act as a constraint conditional on the salience of the case. Using a dichotomous measure of salience, prior studies finds mixed results as to whether the Court may alter its decisions in cases of low or high salience. By updating our previous measure of salience (Collins and Cooper 2012) and recasting it with slightly different measurement properties, we find that public opinion influences court decisions in cases of very low salience and cases of very high salience. This research has important implications for our understanding of whether the Supreme Court is insulated from public pressures or if it simply reflects the public mood of the day. The analysis introduced here also provides a useful example of a new salience dataset that should be valuable to judicial scholars.

Scholarly Productivity in Non-Ph.D. Departments

Political scientists hail from large, research-intensive universities like the Ohio State University, regional comprehensive schools like Western Kentucky University, and small teaching-intensive institutions like Mars Hill College. Despite this diversity, most studies of the political science discipline overlook the contributions of individuals from non-Ph.D. departments. To address this oversight, we compare the publishing rates of scholars with four types of affiliations: non-Ph.D. departments, Ph.D. departments, non- U.S. departments, and nonacademic institutions. We focus particularly on whether faculty from non-Ph.D. departments publish in different types of journals than faculty from other departments, and whether the institutional affiliations of editorial board members corre- sponds to the institutional affiliations of published authors. We find that people from non-Ph.D. departments represent 16% of the authors in our sample of political science journals, and their contributions are particularly noteworthy in certain types of journals. We also demonstrate that the institutions represented on editorial boards generally do not reflect the institutional affiliations of the authors who publish in these journals.

Picturing Political Science

What do political scientists study? As part of a larger project, we coded every article in 25 leading journals between 2000 and 2007. We then created a word cloud of the 6,005 titles using www.wordle.net. The 150 most-used words appear in the word cloud. The size of each word is proportional to the number of times the word is mentioned. Draw your own conclusions. Christopher A. Cooper is associate professor, director of the Public Policy Institute, and MPA director at Western Carolina University. His work on state politics, political communication, and political behavior has appeared in Public Administration Review, Political Research Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, State Politics and Policy Quarterly, and other outlets. Todd A. Collins is assistant professor of political science at Western Carolina University. He has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Georgia and aJDfrom the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His research and teaching interests center on judicial politics, public law, and American government. H. Gibbs Knotts is associate prof essor and department head of political science and public affairs at Western Carolina University. His work on public opinion, southern politics, and public policy has appeared in journals including Journal of Politics, Public Administration Review, and Social Science Quarterly. He also co-edited the New Politics of North Carolina (UNC Press, 2008) with Christopher Cooper. doi:io.ioi7/SiO49O9O5O9O9O49O PS • April 2009 365 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.149 on Wed, 19 Oct 2016 04:03:52 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms