On the Nature of Supreme Court Decision Making
On the Nature of Supreme Court Decision Making
复制标题
论最高法院决策的性质
DOI：
10.2307/1964223
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发表时间：
1992
影响因子：
6.8
通讯作者：
L. Epstein
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Tracey E. George;L. Epstein
美国最高法院是如何做出裁决的？自20世纪40年代以来，学者们一直关注两种截然不同的解释。法律模型表明，法治是关键的决定因素。法外模式假定一系列社会、心理和政治因素会产生司法结果。为了确定哪种模型能更好地解释司法判决，我们使用了自1972年以来涉及判处死刑的最高法院案件，并估计和评估了这些模型在解释判决结果方面的成功。虽然这两种模型都表现得相当令人满意，但它们都有令人不安的弱点。法律视角高估了自由主义的结果，法外模式则高估了保守主义的结果。鉴于这些结果，我们测试了另一个命题，即法外框架和法律框架对决策的解释是相互依赖的，而不是相互排斥的。基于这些结果，我们提供了一个最高法院决策的综合模型，该模型考虑了一系列政治和环境力量以及教义约束。
How does the U.S. Supreme Court reach decisions? Since the 1940s, scholars have focused on two distinct explanations. The legal model suggests that the rule of law (stare decisis) is the key determinant. The extralegal model posits that an array of sociological, psychological, and political factors produce judicial outcomes. To determine which model better accounted for judicial decisions, we used Supreme Court cases involving the imposition of the death penalty since 1972 and estimated and evaluated the models' success in accounting for decisional outcomes. Although both models performed quite satisfactorily, they possessed disturbing weaknesses. The legal perspective overpredicted liberal outcomes, the extralegal model conservative ones. Given these results, we tested another proposition, namely that extralegal and legal frameworks present codependent, not mutually exclusive, explanations of decision making. Based on these results, we offer an integrated model of Supreme Court decision making that contemplates a range of political and environmental forces and doctrinal constraints.