The Constraining Capacity of Law on the U.S. Supreme Court

法律原则真的限制了最高法院法官的选择吗？大法官的意识形态偏好是否主导了他们的决定？“法律与意识形态”之争为这些问题提供了相互矛盾的答案。缺少的是对法律原则限制法官根据其意识形态偏好行事的能力的更全面的解释。本项目的目的是对法律理论对司法决策的影响进行全面的理论和实证检验。一些法律规则和标准可能会限制意识形态上的自由裁量权，而另一些规则和标准实际上可能会增强这种自由裁量权，这取决于推定的法律原则对结果的影响程度。目前的研究测试了相互竞争的模型和假设，这些模型和假设是关于法律原则的推定的变化如何影响意识形态自由裁量权，从而影响意识形态投票的程度。该项目将审查法官在过去60年里在多个法律问题领域的大量案件中的投票行为。数据将使用多水平统计模型进行分析。本研究的发现将有助于对判断的更丰富的理解。更广泛地说，关于“游戏规则”如何以及何时约束政治行为者的见解有助于更好地概念化法院在民主进程中的作用。

Does legal doctrine genuinely constrain the choices Supreme Court justices make? Do justices' ideological preferences dominate their decisions? The "law versus ideology" debate provides conflicting answers to these questions. What is missing is a fuller accounting of the capacity of legal doctrine to constrain justices from acting on the basis of their ideological preferences. The current project aspires to provide a comprehensive theoretical and empirical examination of legal doctrine's impact on judicial decision making. Depending on how presumptive legal doctrine is of an outcome, some legal rules and standards may constrain ideological discretion, while others may actually enhance such discretion. The current research tests competing models and hypotheses regarding how variation in the presumptiveness of legal doctrine influences ideological discretion and hence the degree of ideological voting. The project will examine justices' voting behavior in a large number of cases within multiple legal issue areas spanning the prior sixty years. The data will be analyzed using multi-level statistical models. The findings of this research will facilitate a richer understanding of judging. More broadly, the insights regarding how and when the "rules of the game" constrain political actors are informative in better conceptualizing the role of courts in the democratic process.