Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Step Forward from Defensive Denials and Aggressive Grants - Are Justices Opinion-Minded when Voting on Certiorari?

标题：从防御性的拒绝和侵略性的批准向前迈进了一步——在对调卷令进行投票时，法官是否会考虑意见？摘要本研究旨在分析美国最高法院裁决、实名投票和意见书撰写之间的战略关系。出于政策和法律原因，法院的意见对法官来说至关重要。学术文献表明，对案情的裁决对法官设定议程的方式至关重要。然而，法官们非常关心法律，因此，意见，因为它们对法理学和政策都是重要的，可能构成cert期间的另一个战略考虑。我们研究1925年《司法法案》之后的制度变革是否促使法官们对他们在决策过程中即将面临的集体行动问题的解决方案进行投票。更具体地说，我们探讨了他们投票的程度，考虑到他们影响意见写作过程的能力。本研究使用了两个主要的数据来源。首先是西班牙最高法院的数据库。其次是来自华盛顿国会图书馆的法官论文数据。我们将美国最高法院多阶段决策过程的三个阶段，即证书决定、案情投票和意见书写作，从理论上和经验上联系在一起。因此，这项研究增加了我们对证书和意见书写作本身的了解，此外还提供了对大学博弈及其制度先例的更全面的看法。该项目还考察了法官在多大程度上具有战略意义，并更好地解释了由此产生的法理学和政策。这种探究促进了科学的进步，促进了更丰富、更有力的司法行为理论和相关实证工作的发展。这个项目有可能对司法政治的研究产生更广泛的影响。首先，它探讨了一个不常被提及的问题：法院是如何制定其议程的？其次，本研究的一些见解可能适用于其他（美国和外国）法院的研究。最后，为本研究目的而编码的数据将在网上提供，这些数据来自国会图书馆大法官的摘要，编码方案以及任何原始材料也将提供。后者将服务于学术界的教育和研究目标。

Title: A Step Forward from Defensive Denials and Aggressive Grants - Are Justices Opinion-Minded When Voting on Certiorari?PIs: Jeffrey Segal and Ehud Sommer, SUNY Stony BrookProposal Number 0648209AbstractThis study aims to analyze the strategic relationship between cert decisions, merits votes and opinion writing on the US Supreme Court. For policy and for legal reasons court opinions are of utmost importance for justices. The scholarly literature indicates that the decision on the merits is pivotal to the way justices set their agenda. However, justices care dearly about the law, and thus opinions, consequential as they are to jurisprudence as well as policy, potentially constitute another strategic consideration during cert. We examine whether an institutional change following the Judiciary Act of 1925 motivates Justices to cast their votes on cert thinking about solutions to collective action problems they are about to face during their decision making process. More specifically, we explore the extent to which they cast their vote on cert thinking about their ability to influence the opinion writing process. This study uses two major sources for data. First is the Spaeth Supreme Court databases. Second is data from justices' papers at the Library of Congress in DC. We tie together theoretically and empirically three stages of the multistage decision-making process on the US Supreme Court, Cert decisions, Merits vote and Opinion writing. Thus the study adds to our knowledge of cert and opinion writing in and of themselves, in addition to providing a more comprehensive view of the collegial game and its institutional antecedents. This project also examines the extent to which justices are strategic, and better explains the resulting jurisprudence and policy. Such an inquiry enhances scientific progress and stimulates the development of richer, more powerful theories of judicial behavior and related empirical work.There is a potential for this project to achieve a broader impact on the study of judicial politics. Firstly, it examines an infrequently visited question: how does the court set its agenda? Secondly, some of the insights from this study may be applied to the study of other (American and foreign) courts. Finally, data coded for the purposes of this study from justices' docket books in the Library of Congress will be made available online, and coding scheme as well as any raw material will also be available. The latter will serve both educational and research goals of the academic community writ large.