Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Determinants of Countermajoritarian Behavior: State Supreme Courts and The Power of Judicial Review

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This doctoral dissertation research project assesses when supreme courts review statutes and under what conditions. Does the likelihood of judicial review vary across issue saliency, institutional rules (e.g., elected or appointed courts), justices (e.g., party affiliation), and strategic situations (e.g., divided or unified control of government)? Despite the centrality of these questions, judicial scholars have only recently begun to systematically examine the forces influencing statutory review. Thus, this doctoral dissertation systematically analyzes and evaluates: 1) the extent to which judicial review varies across areas of law with varying degrees of saliency; 2) whether older statutes presumably passed by dormant coalitions, are more likely to be declared unconstitutional than newer statutes; and, 3) whether judicial review varies across institutional or political circumstances that can be reasoned to influence the strategic environment of state supreme courts. The research design employs the collection and analysis of data from the fifty states. These data consist of the population of state supreme court judicial review cases in five areas of law. The analysis involves statistical estimation and evaluation of models of five types of legal cases that came before state supreme courts in the 1970-1996 period. This doctoral dissertation promises to provide a holistic picture of judicial review by state supreme courts.