Academic

Owens & Wedeking on Predicting Ideological Drift of Supreme Court Justices

By Lawrence Solum

Ryan J. Owens and Justin Wedeking (Harvard University and University of Kentucky - Dept. of Political Science) have posted Picking an Unsettled Brain: The Role of Cognitive Complexity in Ideological Drift on the United States Supreme Court on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

We examine whether policymakers can predict whether nominees to the Supreme Court will drift ideologically. We analyze the pre-nomination speeches, articles, and separate opinions published by every justice who served at least ten years on the Court. Our data show that we can indeed predict whether a nominee will drift ideologically once on the Court.

And from the paper:

We were able to examine how stable their world views were. Nominees whose world views varied prior to their nominations were much more likely to drift once on the Court. This suggests that when presidents are narrowing their short lists, they should pay close attention to the speeches, writings, and opinions that a nominee makes to see if they exhibit a varied range of perspectives. If they do, the president should think twice about nominating the person. At the same time, we found that political context and prior judicial experience matters. So too, does Court composition.

Interesting & recommended.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on January 12, 2011 (boomark / email).