Two years after its signing into law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly called the Affordable Care Act (ACA), underwent a constitutional challenge at the Supreme Court. The Court’s decision to uphold the power of Congress in enacting most of the provisions of the ACA was regarded as a highly salient decision that is thought to have affected the public perception of the law. The focus of this thesis is to determine whether the Supreme Court was able to frame arguments used for or against the ACA in relation to the decision. By organizing and analyzing open-ended responses gathered from a panel survey both before and after the 2012 decision, I sought to determine how arguments used in discussion about the law and institutions regarding it varied after the decision. Findings show that the argument types used to explain individuals’ policy perceptions remained relatively stable throughout the waves. The study presented here offers an in-depth, micro-level effects of a real Court decision on individuals. By focusing on within-subject language change in a tight window around the decision, this approach helps clarify thinking about the relationship between the Court and public opinion.

This thesis examines the recently decided Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The case regards campaign finance reform, and has raised significant controversy recently. This thesis will evaluate the arguments from both the dissent and the majority opinions, contextualize these arguments with respect to the history of campaign finance reform and the history of the legislation with regard to corporations, and will ultimately pass judgment on whether the Court was correct in its decision. Implications for the post-Citizens world will also be considered.

In recent months, presidential appointments to the Supreme Court have become an increasingly salient issue with both the public and the press. The relevance of the topic makes it an inviting subject for political science research. When looking at the question of judicial quality, the problem that researchers have faced in the past is one of quantifying quality. This work seeks to expand on previous survey research done on the quality of individual justices. By using quality scores (Comiskey 2004) as a dependent variable, it is possible to analyze influences on the President’s nomination choice and their relative impacts on the quality of justices. By using a more rigorous approach, this study can more confidently make assertions about the nature of the nomination and confirmation process and the quality of Supreme Court justices.

This project explores the role that the United States Supreme Court plays in shaping public opinion. Previous scholars have successfully demonstrated that political elites influence public opinion, but those researching the Court's influence on attitude change have reached mixed findings. I build on previous work in three important ways. First, I employ a method of attributing attitude change to the Court that is a theoretical and empirical improvement over previous ways of identifying those who should be influenced by the justices, "reception" of cases. By "reception", I mean whether an individual understands the Court's decisions. Second, I place Court decisions within the broader information environment that includes the cues sent to the public by other political elites. These cues may reinforce or undermine the justices' decision, which could amplify or undercut the effect of receiving cases on attitude change. Third, I take advantage of recent work on the dynamics of attitude change by interacting reception with one's relevant pre-existing beliefs and personal characteristics. To test these assertions, I use a mixed method, multi-case design that combines existing survey research with original data collected from a quasi-experiment conducted in summer 2005. The results indicate that under certain conditions, receiving Court decisions is associated with attitude change on the issues involved in the cases. This project closes with several suggestions for future research including how to refine reception as a method of attributing attitude change to the Court. / text

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<p>In this project, I examine why the judicial authority of the United States Supreme Court has increased. I propose a theoretical explanation of endogenous institutional change at the Court whereby the actions of the Court---specifically its decisions and the opinions in which it announces those decisions---have, over the long-run, altered the structures of the American separation-of-powers system. The Court has built up public support for the institution of judicial review to such a degree that its rulings are respected even when opposed by strong political actors---including the public. I evaluate this theory by analyzing three important transitional periods of Supreme Court history. The first case study explores the Court under Chief Justice John Marshall, and examines how the Court established judicial review as the most important means of constitutional interpretation. The second case study explores the Court's first cases interpreting the three Reconstruction Amendments, and shows that through these decisions the Court established itself as the arbiter of the meaning of these new amendments. The third case study looks at the Court's decision to hear reapportionment cases and its articulation of the political question doctrine that provided a legalistic method of expanding the political power of the Court. I conclude from these case studies that my theory provides a useful explanation for the expansion of judicial authority.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis looks at the state of marriage equality activism in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 26, 2013 decisions in United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry. Some scholars, such as Gerald Rosenberg, argue that Supreme Court decisions can never affect “significant social change,” either directly or indirectly, while others argue that such decisions can be hugely important in directly affecting policy. My focus is on how activist organizations, which have a substantial track record of directly affecting policy, are influenced by changes to the political environment stemming from major Court decisions regarding social issues. After examining how past litigative efforts such as Baehr v. Lewin and Goodridge v. Department of Public Health have affected the LGBT rights movement, and marriage equality activism specifically, I discuss how organizational strategies have changed minimally, but the political environment in which marriage equality activism is operating has shifted quite a bit, especially in terms of framing and legal precedent. I conclude that Court decisions can indeed have a significant impact on social change by affecting the way in which it is possible for activists on both sides of the issue to shape and deliver their message to the general public, legislators, and courts in future litigative efforts.

The "law versus politics" debate is central in the study of the Supreme Court's institutional role in US democracy and law making. Research has sought to determine if the Supreme Court is an unconstrained political actor or if it is constrained by precedent. This dissertation contributes to this debate by theorizing that there is not a direct tradeoff; instead, even a politically motivated Court can be constrained by precedent. Given precedent is an internally imposed norm, what incentive does a politically motivated Supreme Court have to adhere to precedent when it results in outcomes that deviate from the Court's most preferred ideological outcome? There has been a lack of theoretical development and empirical testing that would explain the Court's incentive to adhere to precedent. I argue that even a politically motivated Supreme Court has an interest in adhering to precedent as a means of control over the lower courts. The Court has a role as a principal with the Courts of Appeals acting as an agent. The Supreme Court uses precedent as a standard that guides lower court decision-making in thousands of cases that the Court will never hear. The Supreme Court is willing to sacrifice the dispositional outcome (who wins and who loses) in a given case to issue or adhere to a precedent that will better guide lower court decision-making in a given area. To test this theory, this project will construct an original data set using a new measure of precedent. Specifically, "the law" and "precedent" for a case will be coded in terms of the standard of review. The standard of review can be understood as a precise legal statement of which party has the burden of proof or justification in a given case and the nature of that burden. This is an ordinal measure (coded 0-4) based on the Court's finite legal rules in a given area of law (rational basis, heightened rational basis, intermediate, heightened intermediate and strict). This novel understanding better captures the legal content of court opinions.

Stories abound within our culture, and rarely are stories bestowed more legitimacy than within the courts. Social "facts" might be established within the legal forum, but nonetheless connect to everyday life. Research in social movements and judicial politics is thus becoming increasingly useful as social movement organizations increasingly compete before the Court to effect cultural change through the reification of their stories. Lesbian, gay and bisexuals form one group of storytellers whose "collective stories" are told. It is this set of stories that this paper investigates, following the "narrative turn" in sociology to analyze LGB social movement narratives in the empirical setting of the Supreme Court. I present the findings of my content analysis of the amicus curiae, or "friend of the Court," briefs and Court opinions in the Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence and Garner v. Texas cases, two of the most significant LGB rights cases, covering a span of nearly twenty years. Despite virtually identical casefacts, the Court handed down differing decisions, first ruling against the social movement before later reversing its decision. This research assesses how the narrative voices in the cases changed within the discourse of the Court, and how these collective narratives resonated within a changing culture. First, I assess how LGB social movement organizations, their allies, and countermovement organizations changed their framings and frame alignment processes, how they changed their emotions work and rhetoric, and how these changes were evidence of organizations' identity work processes during the interim between cases. Next, I assess changes in framings and frame alignment processes and emotions work and rhetoric within the opinions handed down by the Court. This serves two purposes: it allows for a comparison of organizational frame resonance with the Court, and also allows analysis of the decisions' resonance within the larger culture. Analysis is also made of the symbolic meanings found within the opinions of the Court in both cases. This analysis shows that LGB social movement and countermovement organizations operate within a cultural code of sexuality. Narratives are useful in observing how norms within this cultural code are enforced, strengthened, or changed by negotiation and legitimization before the Court. Consequently, this research contributes not only to our understandings of cultural change, but also to social movement theory, especially of identity work processes, to the field of social psychology, to the sociology of sexualities, and to the sociology of emotions and emotions work.

The past several decades have witnessed a remarkable increase in the number of amicus curiae briefs filed at the U.S. Supreme Court. While scholars debate the effectiveness of amicus curiae briefs, they generally agree on the effectiveness of briefs filed by executive attorneys. A plethora of studies address the amicus curiae brief activity of the solicitor general, but relatively few examine state attorneys general. State attorneys general are the legal representatives of the states and have become increasingly successful as amici since the early 1980s. I explore state attorney general amicus curiae brief activity and argue that existing theories of amicus curiae participation by the solicitor general and interest groups, are inadequate for state attorneys general because of the unique institutional context in which state attorneys general operate. State attorneys general, I argue, must balance political, legal, and administrative factors when filing amicus curiae briefs. I also recognizes that amicus curiae briefs are not a singular event and are instead a process in which actors make several decisions across a variety of contexts. Within each context each factor takes on a different weight. I conclude state attorneys general are strategic political actors who consider political, legal, and administrative factors in their amicus curiae briefs.