Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Creation and Evolution of Precedent on the US Supreme Court

博士论文研究：美国最高法院判例的产生与演变

• 批准号: 1122826
• 负责人: James Rogers
• 金额: $ 1万
• 依托单位: Texas A&M Research Foundation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-07-01 至 2012-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1122826&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Creation; Evolution

Given that the United States Supreme Court is not specifically required to follow past decisions, it has been difficult to explain why the Court ever adheres to precedent that it does not agree with. Consequently, research to-date has sought to determine if the Supreme Court is an unconstrained political actor or if it is constrained by a norm of following precedent. The current research responds to this existing puzzle by empirically testing the theory that the US Supreme Court adheres to precedent because of its effect in guiding lower court decision-making in those thousands of cases that the US Supreme Court will never hear. The research plan involves coding 53 US Supreme Court cases and 1700 Court of Appeals cases from the period 1965 through 2008 related to gender equity claims. Using this data, the researcher will test the relationship between precedent and other political and institutional concerns.The findings from this research will advance understanding of the impact of existing legal decisions on the present decision making processes of the US Supreme Court.

鉴于美国最高法院没有被具体要求遵循过去的裁决，很难解释为什么最高法院总是坚持它不同意的先例。因此，迄今为止的研究试图确定最高法院是一个不受约束的政治行为体，还是受到遵循先例的规范的约束。目前的研究通过实证检验美国最高法院坚持先例的理论来回答这个现有的难题，因为它在指导下级法院在美国最高法院永远不会审理的数千起案件中的决策方面发挥了作用。 该研究计划涉及编码53个美国最高法院案件和1700个上诉法院案件从1965年到2008年期间有关性别平等的索赔。利用这些数据，研究者将测试先例和其他政治和制度问题之间的关系。本研究的结果将促进对现有法律的决定对美国最高法院目前决策过程的影响的理解。