Collaborative Research: Creating Cross-institutional preference measures: Methodological improvements for studying constraints on the Supreme Court

最近的政治学研究工作包括行政和立法部门对美国最高法院施加的限制、总统和参议院对司法选择的影响的性质、总检察长对法院诉讼程序的影响，以及利益集团利用法院实现其政治议程的情况。然而，理解现代法院与其他政治行为者之间相互作用的性质和影响一直是一项智力挑战。关键问题是很难比较跨制度边界的政治行为者的政策偏好。Bailey和Maltzman提出了一个由三部分组成的研究设计来解决这些需求。首先，他们建议进行广泛的跨机构立场的原始数据收集。这些数据为比较法官、立法者、总统和利益集团的偏好提供了基础。其次，Bailey和Maltzman建议用新颖的偏好测量技术来分析这些数据，以创建跨机构可比较的理想点估计。第三，他们建议使用这些措施来模拟外部行为者对最高法院决策的影响。

Recent work in political science has investigated constraints imposed by the executive and legislative branches on the U.S. Supreme Court, the nature of presidential and senatorial influence on judicial selection, the influence of the solicitor general on Court proceedings, and interest groups' use of the courts to pursue their political agendas. Yet understanding the nature and implications of the interactions between the modern Court and other political actors has been an ongoing intellectual challenge. The key problem is the difficulty of comparing the policy preferences of political actors across institutional boundaries. Bailey and Maltzman propose a three-part research design to address these needs. First, they propose undertaking extensive original data collection of cross-institutional position taking. These data provide the foundation for comparing preferences of justices, legislators, the president, and interest groups. Second, Bailey and Maltzman propose analyzing these data with novel preference measurement techniques to create ideal point estimates that are comparable across institutions. Third, they propose using the measures to model the influence of external actors on Supreme Court decision making.