Doctoral Dissertation Research: Shaping the Content of Majority Opinions on the U.S. Supreme Court

最高法院多数意见中包含的论点决定了法律政策。然而，目前还不清楚每个多数联盟中最有影响力的成员到底是谁。现有的研究对最高法院中最有影响力的成员提出了相互矛盾的假设，许多模型预测趋同于一个中位数成员，而另一些模型则表明，意见作者本人仍保持着显著的控制权。尽管有这些相互矛盾的预测，但并不存在解开这些预测的数据。该项目旨在解决这一缺陷，方法是在汉堡法院的17个任期内获得关于美国最高法院的每一份散发的多数意见草案的副本。这些数据将补充汉堡法院意见撰写数据库，该数据库包含大法官在1969年至1985年任期内分发给他们的同事的所有备忘录和意见稿的信息。这些数据将成为制定一项新的法院通融措施的基础。利用文本分析软件的进步，并通过将明确的讨价还价行动与多数意见草案的内容变化相匹配来编码通融，这种方法显示了意见中纳入了谁的所表达的偏好，并提供了第一个经验检验，以确定法院中哪些法官在形成意见内容方面具有影响力。由于它将提供对意见撰写过程的前所未有的了解，该项目有望提高我们对产生法院意见的合议性互动的了解。将这些数据与有关制度因素、司法特征和案件事实的信息结合起来，这项研究将为形成国家政策的法律意见的发展提供洞察力。新的数据将促进我们对法律发展的理解，同时仔细探索受其自身成员、部门间和部门内政治以及法律考虑制约的合议庭成员的战略行动。该项目的数据库将向学者提供，允许广泛的学术参与重新考虑最高法院的决策策略。

The arguments contained within Supreme Court majority opinions determine legal policy. However, it remains unclear precisely who the most influential member is within each majority coalition. Existing research presents competing hypotheses about the most influential member on the Court, with many models predicting convergence to a single median member, while others suggest that the opinion author herself retains significant control. Despite these conflicting predictions, data to disentangle them do not exist. This project aims to address this deficiency by obtaining copies of each circulated majority opinion draft on the U.S. Supreme Court during the seventeen terms of the Burger Court. These data will supplement the Burger Court Opinion Writing Database, which contains information on all memoranda and opinion drafts that the justices circulated to their colleagues between the 1969 and 1985 terms. These data will be the basis for the creation of a new measure of accommodation on the Court. Using advances in text analysis software, and coding accommodation by matching explicit bargaining actions with changes in the content of the majority opinion drafts, this approach shows whose expressed preferences are incorporated into the opinion and provides the first empirical test to determine which members of the Court are influential in shaping the opinion content. As it will provide an unprecedented look into the opinion writing process, this project promises to improve our understanding of the collegial interactions that produce the Court's opinion. Combining these data with information on institutional factors, justice characteristics, and case facts, this research will provide insight into the development of the legal opinions that shape national policy. The new data will advance our understanding of the development of law, while carefully exploring the strategic actions by members of a collegial body constrained by its own membership, inter- and intra-branch politics, and legal considerations.The database from this project will be made available to scholars, allowing wide scholarly participation in reconsideration of strategies of Supreme Court decisionmaking.