Suchergebnisse

Measuring the U.S. Supreme Court's policy changes is complicated by change in the content of the cases that come before the Court. I adapt from earlier scholarship a method to correct for changes in case content and use this method to measure change in the Court's support for civil liberties in the 1946–85 terms. Analysis based on this method indicates that because of changes in case content, the average difficulty of reaching a pro-civil liberties result varied during that period. With corrections for case difficulty, the Warren Court of the 1950s appears to have been more conservative, and the Burger Court more liberal, than patterns of case outcomes themselves suggest. This method, while imperfect, has utility for the measurement of policy change in the Supreme Court and other institutions and thus can serve as a building block in analyses of the processes and determinants of change.

For eighteen years, Supreme Court watchers have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1960s, the Court expanded legal protections for civil liberties far more than it had in any previous period. After Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, many observers expected that his appointments would move the Court away from its commitment to civil liberties. When Nixon was able to appoint four new justices in his first three years in office, that expectation was strengthened. Since that time, each presidential election victory and each Supreme Court appointment by a conservative Republican has led to new hopes and fears that the Cout would abandon its strong support for civil liberties.To a degree, these expectations already have been realized. Without doubt, the Supreme Court under Warren Burger was less supportive of civil liberties than it had been under Earl Warren. But it did not take the clear conservative position that many Court watchers had anticipated. Reflecting their surprise, a 1983 book about the Burger Court was subtitled, "The Counter-Revolution That Wasn't" (Blasi, 1983).

For eighteen years, Supreme Court watchers have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1960s, the Court expanded legal protections for civil liberties far more than it had in any previous period. After Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, many observers expected that his appointments would move the Court away from its commitment to civil liberties. When Nixon was able to appoint four new justices in his first three years in office, that expectation was strengthened. Since that time, each presidential election victory and each Supreme Court appointment by a conservative Republican has led to new hopes and fears that the Cout would abandon its strong support for civil liberties.To a degree, these expectations already have been realized. Without doubt, the Supreme Court under Warren Burger was less supportive of civil liberties than it had been under Earl Warren. But it did not take the clear conservative position that many Court watchers had anticipated. Reflecting their surprise, a 1983 book about the Burger Court was subtitled, "The Counter-Revolution That Wasn't" (Blasi, 1983).

Although legislatures enact policies, their implementation is generally in the hands of administrative agencies. Thus, it is important to identify the mechanisms of control that exist & to understand their significance in enhancing the effectiveness of the implementation process. The positions of legislatures & appellate courts are examined in general terms & their relative capacities to make use of particular mechanisms of influence over the behavior of policy implementors are compared. Mechanisms examined include the capacities to base a policy on valid theory, issue clear directives to implementors, choose implementors, specify the form of the implementation process, allocate resources, & inflict sanctions. Both courts & legislatures have limited capacities to influence implementation, but legislatures are favored, even though they make limited use of their powers of control. Modified HA.

The relationship between policy makers' demand-screening decisions and their responses to demands that have been given full consideration can be examined in courts which possess discretionary jurisdiction. Some empirical evidence on these courts suggests that their case-screening decisions and decisions on the merits are closely linked, based on the same criteria-the merits of lower-court decisions—applied in the same way. This conception is tested for the California Supreme Court for 1970-1974 through an examina tion of the relationship between votes to accept cases and votes to reverse lower-court decisions in the same cases. Only a weak relationship is found. The weakness of this relationship is explained by the role of "non-merits" criteria for screening decisions and by the fluidity of justices' assessments of the merits.